"Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history's in a strand of your hair.
Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document.
The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent.
The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand."
-- Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
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| Self portrait with self portrait (acrylic and spray paint on paper) 3-14-14 |
Of all the genres that I dabble in, self portrait is, by far, the one I turn to most.
Volumes have been written about why artists through history have incorporated themselves, or made themselves the primary subject of, their own drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures.
There are lots of dark and thorny psychological and artistic theories about why artists choose their own faces as subject matter. And I've definitely used this art form to explore both the dark and the thorny. But I've also followed its path toward the humorous and the whimsical. But behind all those theories lies a more practical consideration that I think the historians sometimes overlook. When there is no other subject available, the good thing is that an artist can always turn the brush or the camera or the pencil or the clay on his or her own face.
This particular self-portrait took me a few days to finish. It was a process that incorporated photography, drawing, painting and sculpture (if you consider a large hand-cut paper stencil a kind of sculpture, which I do.)
I think I like this piece particularly because of how the paint on the eyes bled around the stencil and made them look like the mysterious ink blots of a Rorschach test. (You'll have to look into them yourself to determine if there's something dark, thorny, or humorous behind them.)
Self portrait is an unforgiving medium. It's definitely not for everyone. It requires brutal honesty and a strong stomach. I've created literally hundreds and hundreds of self portraits, using myriad media, some straightforward, some convoluted and complex. Self portrait has given me a way to explore unfamiliar techniques, to experiment and try new things, to stretch myself artistically, to learn and grow. And even though the portraits are literally of my exterior, each one is more accurately a glimpse (or a long, hard look) at what's happening on my inside.
