For me art is about exploration and discovery.

My favorite artists are ones that explore an idea or an object by repeatedly portraying it. They’re trying to learn something and teach us along with them. What does that object really look like?  Or what can I represent about a thing that isn’t normally a part of the visual representation? How can I point out the humor/seriousness/irony by the way I represent it in art?

Van Gogh painted no less than 21 variations of Starry Night and drew many in addition to that. Monet painted almost 300 compositions of water lilies. Frida Kahlo painted 55 self portraits. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn these numbers are even larger but some artwork was destroyed or never presented by the artist.

It’s self portraits and exploration of the self which I’m interested in today.  It’s not just painters who explore self portraiture. Rodin was known to have included his own likeness in sculptures and writers such as Maya Angelou and Sylvia Plath have taken deep dives into the self with their work. I doubt there is a person reading this who hasn’t done their own self portrait, perhaps informally, via a selfie or at least gotten roped in by someone else for an ussie. 

What do we want to convey or learn about ourselves with a self portrait? I’ve taken a deep dive into my own self portraits to reflect on what I wanted from those images as best I can from what I saved and remember.

My earliest self portraits seem to no longer exist (in any form I can find anyways!). I recall doing a watercolor painting and a pretty atrocious digital drawing. I have been able to find ones I’ve created over the past 15 years, mostly photographic. I have taken countless selfies but I’ve only included those that I really intended to take in an artful way or ones I maybe didn’t intend that way but then used in that way after the fact.

Lee Friedlander Inspired

Fresh off photography class, I’d learned of Lee Friedlander and was very enamored with the idea of obscure photographs of myself. A shadow. Or a reflection. You can find lots of great examples of his work here. And a couple of mine below.

Digital Artwork

Around the same time I started to learn Photoshop and Illustrator and used that to explore ways to represent myself even further. The first of these is obviously unfinished (I have no legs!) but I still signed it probably because that was just a digital asset I had ready.

This first image was part of a group of images I drew of myself and my cats plus anything else that felt important or representative to me at that time.

Not-a-Selfie Selfie

I got my first camera phone in 2012 and, as for many others, this opened up a world of photographic opportunities for me. At that time, selfie sticks or cell phone mounts were not very common which made selfies extremely apparent when you saw either an arm outstretched or the literal reflection of a person taking the photo via a mirror.

Many thought of this as excessively vain so many of us went to great lengths to attempt to take photos that people would believe were not selfies.

Positioning your arms in a way that don’t appear to go towards the camera, propping up your phone on something so that you can make both hands visible in the photo or posing in a way that seemed too unusual for a selfie were some of my go-to’s. I had a friend who would tape her phone to the wall!

Can you see the difference between these two photos? I edited one before posting it to social media to make it less obviously a selfie.

Selfies that Say Something

As selfies became more acceptable, we embraced it as a way to show people things we’re doing, feeling or express our opinions (but kind of subtly?).

My job is happiness but I can be grumpy. I vote, support resisting.. whatever you need to. I surround myself with patterns and art and when Big Bird is under attack, I support him (Big Bird beats “binders full of women” every time).

What’s most interesting to me here are my many political images. Generally, I avoid discussing politics on social media. I’m conflict averse. But in my self portraits, I seem to feel more comfortable showing just a bit more.

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Lately, I’ve been really interested in recreating famous artwork and portraits. I may switch mediums depending on the work and what speaks to me but that’s something to look out for.