Self portrait Tuesday

If you expect someone to give you a degree in fine art (especially with a focus in painting and drawing), somewhere along the way they will expect you to do a self -portrait. It is a required part of your training. I was horrified by this idea and assignment in all its forms. Always painful for me and they were never any good! Who really wants to be forced to look at and analyze yourself for hours during the painting process and then be forced to discuss it for hours during critique?

Consequently, I have not done a self -portrait since I was FORCED to, until now.

As I mentioned in my first posting, this has been a rough year. When you go through something as major as the loss of a parent, it shatters you. Well, that is how it has been for me at any rate. I felt ripped into pieces and hyper aware of the fragmentation. I began to really look at all the separate pieces of my life and self. It was time to think about what was and is working, what isn't, what needs to be let go and what needs developing. I, in short, had to put myself back together.

These paintings are a part of that healing process and an expression of it. I am preparing for a show in August and it is entirely comprised of self-portraits. Gulp. As they are a physical manifestation of my own emotional and spiritual journey, I felt I HAD to be the model. Another lesson to embrace, self-acceptance.

These three paintings are part of a larger piece that will be made up of 13 canvases hung together on a wall. I thought that they would be a good piece to use for the "time" SPT. The sizes of the canvases are all based on the Fibonacci sequence, otherwise referred to as the Golden Mean or the Divine Proportion. I felt that was an appropriate infrastructure for the concept of these works. They will be hung in a spiral pattern on a large wall. I hope you enjoy them.