Being originally a scientist, I have always felt attracted to the inside of what I consider one of the most beautiful elements of the human being, the head: the vessel of our brain - the ruler and director of our thoughts and desires, the almighty - and of the mirror of our soul, the face. Our face, that minimal surface that can inform the world around us whether we are in love or that sadness is emerging from us within our tears.

As an admirer of faces, I have to confess that while looking at the hundreds of them during my life, almost every single time I look at an adult person, friend or stranger, two things happen: I try to imagine that person as a child, and - by paying special attention to the person’s teeth - I try to see his or her skull.

When I join Barbara’s class, I was delighted to discover that the most effective way to approach a portrait is by learning to understand its inner structure. We contemplated the skull for hours and - with drawings and paintings – we retrieved the essence of the most powerful sculpture that nature and evolution have produced.

Throughout the developing of times, at least in Western civilization, people and bad publicity have turned the image of the skull into a creepy symbol of the scariest thoughts of death and the skull inevitably illustrates the most horrific stories of ghosts and sinister creatures of the afterlife.

My reasoning is that if the skull is a metaphor for death, we should not fear death since its symbol is ironically within ourselves all of our lives. So, let’s embrace the integrity and the perdurability of our skull for being our most loyal travel companion throughout life, and for being the holder - and protector - of our most marvelous thoughts and sentiments.