11 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Medusa Idea

I'm back to traditional paintings! Well traditional in the sense that there isn't anything noticeably off when you first see it. It's basically a portrait but front and back.
The painting is going to be of Medusa, before and after she was cursed to have snakes as hair. I don't really want to go into the story in depth because 1) I already did research on this and there's actually like ten different versions of the story about why/how she got the snakes and 2) I haven't chosen which one of the versions I want to influence my art, if I choose any at all. So I don't really want to give the background of the story because it may give you some unintentional meaning to my work which, I usually encourage, but this time the message is pretty straight-forward: I'm just portraying a Greek Mythology story using acrylic paint, a play with light, and a pretty girl.
Ok, so here's how this plays into everything else that I'm doing: It's a play with light. Basically, on the front of the substrate, I'm going to paint Medusa (before the curse) on the front, and Medusa (after the curse.. aka with the snakes) on the back of the substrate. But the portrait on the back will be flipped, so that Medusa's features correspond with the front. The pictures will (hopefully) collide in unity when a strong light hits it.
The only thing about this is that there is absolutely nothing about negative space in this project, which was included in my artist statement (and I was hoping it could be part of my concentration) so I'm a little stuck there. But it does follow through with the light part-- light does play a serious part in this piece. Maybe I should just change my artist statement / concentration. I absolutely do NOT plan on dropping the concept of negative space, though. I have too many ideas for that.
Although I actually did plan on doing this project a very long time ago, I didn't think that I would be doing it now. The only reason I'm doing it right now is because I need a break from doing layers. Layering is really complicated, and I didn't enjoy dealing with layering two projects in a ROW, which, both of them turned out awful. So I'm really looking forward to this one! Especially because this project is really what gave birth to basically ALL my other light/layering ideas. I thought about this painting a really long time ago, and because of it, I suddenly got more and more ideas about light and hidden paintings, which basically led to negative space and layering. So this is kind of like my first step but I'm doing it as my fourth step aha.