So I sit myself down here, and begin to write about my self-portraits, and I wonder where to begin...
Everything I have ever painted or drawn or set into three dimensions is a self-portrait of sorts; no matter whether the form is landscape, still-life, portrait, realism, what have you. It is all me doing it, and so, it is all representative of me, mostly in ways that I do not, cannot, know.
Now, however, I narrow the focus, to works in face and figure, that I have modeled myself, or that I claim to be characterizations of self. What about these? What are my reasons for painting, drawing, sculpting my own image? The first reason that comes to mind is that I am my only captive, live model. People are not willing to sit for me, and I am not willing to ask. Although people, and the human condition, are the most important focus of my work by far, and in fact, probably the only focus of my work, I don't want them around while I am painting. The paradox does not go unnoticed by the painter. Really, no one is welcome where I paint. My work is solitary, and that is the way it will remain. These are not rules I have set down for myself, here; I am only describing the conditions as I see them in operation. When I do portraits of other people, I work from photos, sketches, or both, but without the people themselves present. I work alone.
Painting myself, then, is the only time I have a live model in my workshop. (read basement) I set an old mirror up next to my easel a few years ago, and have never taken it down. I look in the mirror, and paint on the canvas. I don't paint what I see, although the portraits come out looking like me, physically. I don't know what I see in that mirror, and my colour and compositional choices are made without much conscious consideration. My palette is usually a matter of what colours I have that are the oldest, or tubes that have been punctured, or have bad caps, and that must be used first, before they dry out, or that are almost empty, and I want to finish off. Composition has to do with the size of the canvas or panel pieces I have at the moment, where the flaws on the canvas lie, the size and shape of my mirror, etc. When I did 'Man on a Wire,' the cutoffs (pants) I wore were on their absolute last legs, with holes in places that made them unwearable in public. They had been with me for many years, first as pants, then when the knees went, as cutoffs, then, as they dissolved in other more personal places, they had their last bow, as a prop in a self-portrait, as much a part of myself as my skin. After the last sitting, I washed them one last time, and cut them to pieces, and used them as rags for cleaning my brushes, which is the common fate of all my clothes.
When looking in the mirror at myself, I literally do not know what I see. I am not paying strict attention. I am seeing my self, and at the same time, more. I am seeing my past... my times before. I am seeing the paint, the gobs of colour that have to be got onto the brush and then onto the painting surface, the people I know and have known, other places, far away in space and time. An hour looking, and then five minutes painting, and then an hour or a day looking and looking and looking at I know not what, just staring into canvas and mirror, and then, maybe half the painting, done in a sudden burst of an hour or two, getting out what has been building inside my head somewhere, without knowing what it will look like until it is put down, paint on surface. Drawings happen the same way, only faster. Each time I walk away from the painting for the first few days, I look back, over my shoulder, from the end of the basement. There is nothing there, just unorganised paint. Then one day I look back, and a painting is there. From that point forward, the rest is just finishing up details. As in all my work, I do not suffer with the ending. I stop somewhere just short of completion, at what I deem to be the point of diminished return.
Whatever painting and the fine visual arts are about, for me, self-portraiture holds a basic, defining position in the process. Self-portraiture, and portraiture in general, as I practice it, have nothing to do with the field of painting portraits for other people. I do not choose to paint other people for any reason that is based on them or their wishes. Many people whose portraits I have done, do not know that they have been done. Although some of these paintings, drawings, etc. are quite faithful to the individuals in question, on the few occasions when I have shown the pictures to the individuals themselves, their first question was often 'who is that?' They did not recognise the image as being of them. I found this very interesting, especially since other people, who knew the individuals in question, immediately recognised who the image was. Other people did recognise the images as their own, but were not pleased with the results.
This was a major revelation to me. My first feelings were of disappointment. I had been to a large degree trying to capture the individual's likeness, and the fact that I was perceiving that I had succeeded in doing so, clashed terribly with the individual's opinion that I had failed completely, or worse yet, painted a portrait that was a very bad, ameteurish likeness of them.
After a couple of years of practice, though, I began to recognise a pattern emerging. People are quite capable of recognising other peoples' portraits, but not so, where their own likeness is concerned. As my skills as an observer and craftsman improved, it became increasingly obvious to me that the 'problem' I was having in the portrait department was not one of my own making, and was in fact not a problem at all. I was onto something, here, of importance. I had been painting for about two years, and at that point made the decision to continue painting portraits of people, but to never, never, never 'do' a portrait 'for' someone. There was something significant in my portraiture, but something that would probably never be well received by the individuals in question. Maybe it was that there was too much of 'me' in their portraits. I am sure that this is part of the answer. I am at present, equally sure that this is not the complete answer to the conundrum, though. There is probably too much of 'them' in their portraits as well, for their liking. It was at this point of realisation, that I stopped referring to the people whose faces I painted as 'models,' and began to refer to them (internally) as 'victims.' In my self-portraits, I offer myself no more mercy than I grant my other portraiture 'victims,' and probably, a good deal less.
So, returning to the self-portrait issue, I must ask: Who is this man?? What do these paintings of myself represent? Am I as blind to the content of these images, ostensibly of myself, as others seem to be, when I paint them? I am sure that the answer is, to a large degree, yes. As I mentioned above, I literally do not know what I see in the mirror or on the canvas when I am painting... especially when I am painting myself. This is probably an artifact of the painting process itself. Painting engages the conscious mind, certainly, but I believe that it also engages much of the brain that is outside of conscious awareness as well. Human awareness is a rather small and myopic bit of focus, and the act of holding together any sort of a plan for the 'whole picture' in anything as complex as a portrait is going to require much more of the brain's involvement than could be captured in awareness.
When painting one's-self, the process is incalculably complicated, by the fact that the work is self-referential, and the brain knows it, at every level, conscious, unconscious, subconscious, ego, id, you name it, all of those voiceless and vociferous little parts of one's-self are going to do their best to add their 'two cents' into the final product. Once such a piece of work is completed, or shall I say, once I have stopped working on it, and set it aside to dry, and begun on the next task, there is little chance of my ever being able to see the full content of what has been writ in paint, upon canvas. As long as all the little bits and pieces within me, that have helped guide my brush, in what I can only imagine as a great internal war for primacy... to be heard... are satisfied enough with their input, so that they will allow me peaceful sleep and proper digestion, then I am satisfied. I park my self-portraits in the back hallway of my house, a place where I am the only frequent passer-by. I look at them often, until they are dry, and eventually displaced by other newer self-paintings, and make their way up into the attic, where they will cure completely, and collect dust, and later be removed from their stretchers, and be packed away in boxes, or rolled up and stuffed into tubes, or whatever, and sleep, un-noticed.