You don't have to walk into a gallery to see Marieke Bauer's artwork on display.
These days, Bauer (whose pronouns are they/them), has a lot more fun wearing it.
For nearly two years, the logistics coordinator and NYU grad has taken up "hair painting" as their newest form of expression that consists of bleach, brushes, and ready-made hair dye from CVS.
"You start to view yourself as a work of art," Bauer told NBC 4 New York.
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Hair painting isn't a new phenomenon, but the 25-year-old artist found a way to make it their own.
"I recall seeing on TikTok a lot of people doing hair designs and thinking 'that's cool,' but not really resonating," Bauer said. "They were things like hearts and hair colors."
It wasn't until they saw a video of someone painting Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" and an abstract face on a buzz cut that the Harlem artist was inspired to paint something of their own.
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In the beginning, Bauer's designs were freehand and a lot more simple. "I was doing things like a tree or a cat profile," into a bleached buzz cut. Eventually, they "switched over to doing portraits of people that other people would know."
Today, their star-studded roster of completed looks include household names like Prince, Audrey Hepburn, Simone Biles, John Lennon, Adele, Jimi Hendrix, and Taylor Swift. So far, they've painted roughly 45 to 50 faces on the back of their head with no plans of slowing down.
"I want to do Lady Gaga at some point," they said.
The painting process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour.
In order to get the painting to look like the person, Bauer uses free online photo generators that turn an image into a stencil. Then, they set up two mirrors to see the back of their head and use the stencil as a reference while they paint by hand.
Bauer keeps each design for no more than two weeks. After that, they buzz and bleach their hair at home to begin the process all over again.
"Once the hair gets to a certain length my growth coming in affects how visible the design is. Also, I get bored," they confessed with a laugh.
