Terra Cotta bas-relief, psychological self-portrait, measuring 33" high by 22" wide, dated 1997.
This is my earliest self-portrait. I had at this point executed only a few crude paintings and sculptures, and was in the early developmental stages, as far as technical and observational skills are concerned. I had purchased a small kiln, and after executing the panel, but before the clay had dried, I cut the piece into tile sized pieces that would fit in the kiln, for firing. As the tiles dried, they warped, and when I fired them, they warped even further, making assembly impossible. I laid out each tile, one at a time, and with a hammer and a wooden buffer, I struck the fired terra cotta, breaking it into pieces that were small enough to lay flat. There were well over 1,000 pieces by the time I finished banging on it with that hammer. I had all of the pieces carefully laid out like a jigsaw puzzle. I then glued them onto a wooden backing with carpenter's glue. After the glue had dried, I applied grout, and after that was dry, I finished it, along with its wooden trim, with lacquer and coloured glazes.
This piece was done in my basement workshop in January or February 1997, when it was quite cold outside, and consequently, quite cold in my basement. When I began the project, I did not have a heater down there, and the basement was kept above freezing only by the overhead pipes, which carry warm water to the radiators in the apartment above. Before I was finished with the clay, I had scrounged together enough change to go get a small electric heater. There is nothing quite like handling wet clay in a room cool enough to see your breath day after day, to convince one of the wisdom of having one of those little heaters handy.
I did not characterise this piece as a psychological self-portrait until this month, Dec 2000. At the time I executed the piece, I did not know enough about what I was doing to apply any sort of label to it, other than the ones I did in the piece itself. The only word I can use to characterise my state of mind during the time I was making this terra-cotta is deep depression. The depression began in 1994, after my stroke, and although its depth has diminished over the years, it seems to have marked my consciousness permanently. In the winter of January 1997, I was more depressed than I can describe today. This terra-cotta is the only record of my state of mind, at the time of its execution.
Terra Cotta on wooden base, measuring 17.5" high, 8.5" wide, 8" deep, dated, 1997.
This is my first and only self-portrait to date, in the round. It was constructed in much the same manner as the earlier bas-relief, except that an armature was used, packed with newspaper and tied in the general shape of a head, and the clay was then built onto that. Once the clay was partially dried, I cut the head into two pieces, and removed the armature and paper filler, and carved out as much excess clay from the inside as possible. Then I wet the edges where I had cut it open, and rejoined the two pieces, and generally cleaned up the piece. I let it dry much more thoroughly and completely, for two months in total, and took it to a professional kiln to have it fired. They did an excellent job, better than I could have done, even if the head would have fit in my small kiln, which it did not. I used the same lacquer and glaze finish, after I had mounted the head on a wooden base with a felt bottom.
Technically, the piece is much more advanced than the bas-relief, and an excellent, precise likeness of myself. This piece was executed only three months after the first. I used a mirror to execute the work, and the image of a very tired looking man emerged. Interestingly, this is to some degree an artifact of the drying process, during which the face shrunk a small amount. It is also I suspect an artifact to an equal degree on the difference in the way one observes, when one is sculpting, as opposed to when one is inspecting the results.
When I was making the sculpture, I was, as in painting, not 'seeing myself,' but rather doing the relational kind of looking essential to building an object, and working from a model. This kind of looking has more to do with lines and planes and contours than it does with facial recognition. As long as the minute details appear as they should, according to the mind's comparison with the model, things register as ok. I don't recall if I ever inspected the sculpture as a representation of 'self' during the building process. It is possible that I did not. Once the piece was completely finished, however, I began the process of absorbing the actual result, and comparing it with my internal self-image. My take on the sculpture, even to this day, is that it looks a good deal older than I do, even though other individuals who have inspected it, and me, do not concur, and claim that it is a pretty good likeness.
Since I do not put a lot of faith in other peoples' powers of observation, and since I also know for a fact that no human being who has walked upon the face of the earth has ever seen themselves as they really are, I guess the actual degree to which this piece is a faithful technical rendering of self will remain forever a mystery. When I did the building, though, I was aware that I would have to build the head about twenty percent larger than life if I wanted it to be life-sized after firing, and I did so. My glasses fit the terra-cotta head perfectly... and the results are uncanny. Perhaps it is true, that 'the clothes (or in this case, the glasses) make the man.'
Found Metal, Cement Block, and Screws - 17" high, 6" wide, 6" deep, dated, 1997
Another self portrait. And I call myself a realist.
In the summer of 1997 I was walking home from a friend's house one evening, down a fairly rough side street, when suddenly a beer bottle flew at me out of the darkness ahead, barely missing me. Having no idea what the deal was, I looked around for something to arm myself with, and found this heavy, club-like piece of metal in the dirt. Walking on a little further, I came to a couple of men, drunk, sitting there talking to one another, and realised that in all liklihood, they had not seen me when one of them threw the empty bottle in my direction.
I didn't throw away the piece of metal, instead I took it home, and sat it in the hall. Later, it found its way into the basement, where I work, and in the Fall, I realised it looked sort of like a person wearing a hat, in a very rough and corroded way. I cleaned it off best as possible, and sat it into an old drawer, filled with a cement mix. When it was dry, I, knocked away the drawer, oiled it, and drove a couple of screws into the 'face,' for shiny eyes, and called it 'Crumble Man.'
It wasn't until some time later that I decided it was a self-portrait of sorts. Whatever this piece represents, it is one of my favourite pieces. In addition to being an absolutely magnificent door stop (it's quite heavy), and being one of the few non-representational, 'found object' pieces I've done, it's the epitome of me and every garbage picker in the neighborhood.
Somehow, I sort of doubt that the city of Chicago would want to commission a larger version for public display. Heh.
Acrylic on canvas, glued to the outside of a box I built for a sample case, dated 1998.
In the summer of 1998, when I had been painting and sculpting for about two and one half years, I decided that I was ready to approach some galleries, and see if they were interested in representing my work. Not having any idea of how to go about this, I build a sample case out of some scrap oak that I had, capable of holding ten small oil paintings, and about one hundred works on paper. Since I had only some fiberboard panels for the two large surfaces of the case, I glued canvas to them, and painted them. On one side, I did a still life, and on the other side, this self-portrait. I figured that with my face on the box, it would always be pretty clear whose box it was.
I used the box exactly once. The box turned out to be extraordinarily heavy when full, and the concept of making cold calls on art galleries with a case of samples was extraordinarily impractical, not to mention naive. I did learn a lot from the adventure, though (it was my impetus for developing this website, and bringing my work on-line), and published a somewhat humorous essay on the experience, Art in America - An Art Gallery Experience.
The painting was done in Acrylic, for its sturdiness, and ease in cleaning and reparability. This painting looks more the age and way I see myself than the previous attempts. It was painted quickly, in two days, and it was not until several weeks later that I noticed I had painted the eyes two different colours.
Watercolour on paper
18" high, 24" wide, on Arches paper, dated, 1999
In the fall of 1998 I began to paint on paper, using ink, watercolour and gouache. The reason for the switch was twofold: First, I had completed about two hundred paintings and another thirty or so sculptures in the past two and a half years, and the house was full, and the attic was full as well. I was out of places to put stretched canvases and three-dimensional work. Paper is a very compact medium; a hundred paintings easily fit into a thin portfolio. Second, it was getting on into winter again, and I just did not feel like another winter in the basement. Painting in oil is great in the summer, when the doors can be left open for ventilation, but in the winter, the smell of oil painting in an unventilated basement can get pretty irritating, to say nothing of the cold. So I moved my work up into a small office, and learned a new medium; the cool, precise world of watercolour and drybrush.
'No More Fun' was done from a photo taken of me in a graveyard in Akron, Ohio. Although the painting appears to be a take on mortality, that was not exactly what I was driving at when I painted it. It had more to do with the things lost in the passage from childhood, into adulthood.
Charcoal and chalk on paper
19" high, 25" wide, on brown pastel paper, dated, 1999
During the same winter I was learning to paint in watercolour, I was also getting into drawing in dry media, for something other than doing under-drawings for paintings. It is usual for people to learn how to draw first, and then move on to painting and sculpture. I learned sculpture in clay first, and then how to paint, and last how to make finished drawings. Although I did make rough sketches from the start, I found doing finished drawings to be the most difficult of the skills to get a handle on. Fortunately, pencils have erasers.
This drawing, in charcoal, pencil and pastel, was done quickly, and without any attempt to get fancy. It is worth noting that the facial expression is considerably less serious than any of the previous self-portraits. I had never attempted to manipulate the expressions on my portraits, self or other, up to this point. In fact, doing so is a recently acquired skill, which I am just now beginning to use. I can only assume that the expression on this self-portrait must have reflected the expression on my face at the time, indicating that the depression of the past years must have been wearing off by spring of 1999.
One might assume that a person would be aware of their state of mind, and would not have to depend on analysing their self-portraits to figure such things out, but this does not seem to be so, in this particular case.
Oil on stretched canvas, measuring 28" high by 25" wide, dated 1999.
This is my first formal style self-portrait, and was executed in the fall of 1999. I spent more than the usual amount of time on this painting, and paid more than the usual amount of attention to facial anatomy. The crooked mouth is more accurate than what usually appears in my self-portraits. The fact is, I had to have most of my teeth removed as a result of my requiring seizure medication, which ruined my teeth, or gums. I have false teeth, but do not use them. Usually when I paint myself, I do not rely on such careful scrutiny of myself as I did this time, and the results, which must derive partially from recollection, are more flattering than they were in this painting. Such is life.
So why, then, have I painted myself as the 'Kerosene Man,' with flames on my right shoulder? This is a very good question, and I would like to know the answer myself. The flames were not there during the execution of the painting; they did not appear until the very last colour session. I'm a little bit mystified as to the exact why of the flames. Such mindless, motiveless last minute major adjustments in my work are not uncommon.
This painting went completely 'fat' on me, which means that I painted it in so many sessions that by the time I was finishing up the last colour session, I was no longer using linseed oil, but instead was using a nearly undiluted stand oil mixed in with the colour. It was thick and slimy, and I had never used anything with such a feel to it before, as most of my paintings are quite lean, and completed in only three or four sessions. The last session was supposed to be only on the beard, giving it a thick, wild look. After so many slow, pre-meditated sessions on the face, I was just flicking paint at the beard, getting off on being Jackson Pollack for a few hours. Once the beard was done, I added the flames, with a brush that was right on the edge of control, in a matter of one or two minutes.
This painting was never varnished. Instead, as soon as it was dry enough so that the colours would not move on me, I loaded it down with a heavy coat of pure, unthinned stand oil, which was entirely runny and slimy, and had to be encouraged to stick to the surface; it wanted to just bead up and run down the canvas in a lot of places, and I let it have its way, to a limited extent. It was still tacky a year later, had as a result of drying so slowly, has bits of dog hair and dust embedded in the surface, which doesn't bother me, or detract from the work, a bit.
Oil on canvas, 33" high, by 30" wide, dated 2000.
By April 2000, when this was painted, I had stopped doing under drawings in dry medium on my oil paintings. It is much simpler to lay out the work in oil, and make corrections by erasing with paint thinner on a rag, or overpaint if the colour has already set. My first step on this painting was done the year before, when I underpainted the canvas very roughly with some Dioxazine Purple alkyd paint I wanted to try out. I had no idea at the time what I was going to do with the strange purple canvas. The painting was then laid out with a large brush, in white, black and purple the following spring. I did not bother laying in an actual drawing; I just laid in large, quick patches of colour, until the underpainting was completed, about an hour's work.
The finished painting was done in two more days, using only one more colour, Alizarin Crimson. This was the first time I had ever used either Alizarin Crimson or Dioxazine Purple. It was my first bare-chested painting. I was aware that it was a psychological study while I was painting it, which was another first. I had not cut my hair or trimmed my beard at the time in over a year, in preparation for another painting that was to be done that summer, 'Man on a Wire.' I felt it was a good idea to loosen up with a simpler oil painting, to loosen up for the larger composition I had in mind, and that was the impetus for this painting.
Although I knew the painting was a psychological study while I was painting it, I did not know what direction that study would take. I believe that would be impossible, to know in advance. While the self-portrait scheme lends a basic format to putting paint onto a canvas, the psychological study aspect requires that the actual painting process remain completely open, and unplanned.
Oil on canvas
20.25" high, 22.25" wide, on stretched canvas, dated 2000.
This painting was executed in Spring 2000, immediately after the previous painting. I painted it on top of a picture I started the previous fall, and never finished. Because the earlier painting left the surface a little uneven, I decided to use a heavily textured style. This was another psych study, and at the same time another preparatory painting for 'Man on a Wire.' I was once again using colours that were chosen because I happened to have a lot of them, or the tubes were leaky, and I wanted to use them quickly, before they could harden. I used a different head angle and profile, and a more precise representational style on the face. The hair and beard are very heavily textured, to hide the canvas flaws from the previous painting.
The nosebleed feature of the painting did not appear until the rest of the painting was finished. These sudden last minute, un-premeditated compositional changes and assignments of meaning happen too often in my work to be accidental, even though I am not aware of them in advance. It is interesting to note, that so far, this has only occured in my oil paintings, and not in other media.
55" high, 26" wide, oil on stretched canvas, dated, 2000
Beggar man on high wire over city, in one hand, his want, in other hand, his need. Could be anybody.....could be everybody. Could be you.
This, my first full sized self-portrait, was planned a year in advance, although the details were not worked out until after the painting was in progress. The canvas was prepared and roughly underpainted the summer before. Its shape suggested a full sized portrait, and from there the self-portrait became an obvious choice, as I would need a familiar and always available model to do the job. I decided on the subject of a bum-type character in the fall, and let my hair and beard grow out over the winter, for effect. In the spring, I used my digital camera to take some full figure photos of myself, from various heights and angles, to figure out what I liked most. I had just acquired the digital camera in February, so this was the first time I was putting it to such extensive use, in planning a painting. I also used the digital camera for another first on this painting, by photographing each session, so the process of painting can be followed in steps, from start to finish.
Once the painting began, I did not work from the photos I had taken, as working from the mirror was much easier. The only exception was that I did some close-up photos of my feet, with the camera sitting on the floor, so I could get a better low angle perspective. A description of the process itself is included on the bottom of the photo pages, accessible by clicking on 'process of painting' above.
The surprise in this composition was the tightrope. The idea occurred to me at the point in development where I was ready to lay in some sort of shadow, to indicate the floor or ground, on which the figure stands. The background, which had been laid in as an abstract pattern, began to look like a cityscape, and it occurred to me that the stance of the figure was very much like that of a man on a tightrope. The tightrope worked a little too well with the subject that the painting addresses to be pure serendipity, in my opinion. The coincidence left me really scratching my head.
Oil on stretched canvas
64" high by 31" wide, dated 2000
This was my first full nude, although it did not start out as a nude. This was the last of the large canvases I had prepared the previous summer, and after I finished up the previous painting, which had been planned, I decided to do one more self-portrait on this final canvas, which I figured would get rid of the canvas, before it got damaged from just sitting around in my basement, finish up the summer oil painting season, and hopefully put to rest my self-portrait binge, as I was getting a little tired of looking at myself in the mirror.
Once again, I photographed each painting session, so that the process was recorded, and can be viewed from start to finish. By following the series of photos, one can see exactly where the decision to paint a nude was made, as the drawing began with me wearing cutoffs. I did not spend a great deal of time painting in the nude to get the genitalia painted. I have to admit, painting in the nude is not a very practical or comfortable situation for me, because I have a habit of cleaning my hands on my pants and shirt when necessary, which can get sort of messy when the clothing in question are absent. Still, it was a very important project for me, and I would strongly recommend that any serious figural painter do a full nude of themselves. It gave me the opportunity to take a long, hard, unforgiving look at myself; what might be the painter's equivalent to psychotherapy, without the psychiatrist. By the time I was done, I knew more about myself than I ever wanted to know.
In addition to the figure, there is another small detain in the painting, that was my eleventh hour compositional change; By toning the background into two discrete sections, and adding a horizon line with a hint of setting sun in the corner, I moved the figure outside, and added a time or time of life reference to the piece.
Within hours of finishing and signing the painting, I went upstairs, and using a pair of electric clippers, gave myself a complete haircut, head and beard, down to just a very short fuzz. I had had, by then, with summer running down into autumn, enough of self, and portraits, and long hair.
It was time for a change.
It is always time... for a change.