Woman with Two Faces (Owl Sitting on Branch) – explained

Recently, photographer, Henry Swasey asked me about this particular painting.
He wanted to know the story behind it. "What was my inspiration...?"

This is what I told him.
Well, that painting is the same as "Dama Dos Caras" - Woman with Two faces.
The last couple of years I did a lot of Aztec inspired drawings and designs, mostly on paper.
While painting the skull of the woman with two faces, I would flip the canvas over and make changes on the "new image".
I knew, since there were two sets of eyes, that I could create another face. (This was popular in illusionistic imagery a long time ago. Artists used a term called "topsy-turvy", in which the viewer could flip the artwork and see two different images, i.e., a young girl and an old lady.
So instead of the second image being a person, I chose an owl. The details of the woman's face were already laid down, so I instantly saw them as an owl's wings, folded down.
An owl seemed the perfect counterpart to an already mysterious image of a skull of a woman with two faces.
Owls can be scary...so is a woman with two faces.