Self Portraits and Me

A current exhibition of self portraits at the Neue Gallerie in New York (through June 24) has got me thinking about the subject and my own experiences. For me, self portraits are perhaps the most interesting kind of portraiture.

Gustav Courbet, "The Desperate Man," oil, 1843

Artists have made drawings and paintings of themselves for a lot of reasons. Sometimes oneself is the most available and cheapest model. Sometimes a self portrait was a way of including the artist in a work--Botticelli for example put his own face in the background of a religious painting--perhaps as a kind of signature. Others painted themselves or drew themselves for all kinds of reasons. Van Gogh couldn't afford models. Kathe

Kathe Kollwitz, "Self Portrait," charcoal, 1934

Kollwitz explored her own grief-stricken soul. Courbet painted himself desperate and frantic, probably to show his mastery. Sometimes self portraits are more penetrating than others. Sometimes they show the artist playing a part--Rembrandt's etched self portraits for example. These days, artists explore all kinds of things with self portraits. Lucien Freud, Jenny Saville, Jeff Koons, and Chuck Close come to mind.

Self Portrait, oil on panel, 2008

 

Like others, I have drawn and painted myself a few times. Most of the time my reason was simple convenience. That is, I was trying out new paints, or interested a genre of art, or sometimes just keeping busy. This oil painting was done for the latter reason--keeping busy painting a head while mostly working on a cityscape. In a painting like this one there is no sitter to please and indeed no one need ever see it. So a painter has the opportunity to be loose, personal, relaxed even. And although I look dreadfully serious in the portrait, the effect is because of concentration. The averted gaze is because of the mirror being used. Light flooded into the studio perpendicular to my face and neck and hiding the left lens of my glasses. I greatly simplified the background and left the bottom unpainted.

Cubist Self Portrait, charcoal, 2009

About a year or so after the oil portrait, I did a charcoal self portrait in the cubist style. An old friend and fellow artist used to say that there is still a lot more to explore in cubism but doubted that anyone would ever do so. The idea rattled around in my head for a while until one day I grabbed a sheet of newsprint and some vine charcoal, intending to do a cubist still life, perhaps. But I noticed myself in the studio mirror and made this charcoal drawing. That was such fun that I took an old oil painting failure and painted a similar selfie. Unlike the Picasso/Braque tradition of dark umbers and black, I did this one in colors mostly faithful to reality. In the end, the result was satisfying if not particularly distinguished.

Self Portrait, oil on panel, 2009

Memory Selfie, digital, 2018

And  here is a digital self portrait done as part of an online challenge. The task was to do a self portrait from memory in five minutes or less. No mirror, no reference, just straight memory.


For anyone who hasn't tried portrait painting but wants to give it a whirl, a quick and simple way to start is with a mirror and yourself.