Blind Artist Vision: blog by Stella De Genova
Artists like to do studies of many different subjects and they also tend to do studies of themselves. We can get a better understanding of what artists see in themselves through their self-portraits.
What are some of the best known artist self-portraits you can think of? Two that immediately come to mind for me are Rembrandt, possibly sharing his image of self worth, and Vincent Van Gogh, sharing some of his pain.
I have done some self-portraits through the years. I had done some in my earlier years as an artist but don’t have copies of those. We all had to do a portrait of ourselves in my high school art class. At that point, I think I was mainly trying to work on my drawing skills and, of course, I did not have much self-identity at that young age.
Many years later, I did another, a graphite drawing of myself as a single parent of three teenagers. I personally thought it turned out well but my kids hated it! They said I made myself look so old and tired. I didn’t see it but just maybe there was a subconscious message going on there.
As my kids were growing up and I started dating my soon-to-be second husband, I was finding myself and my own way as a woman with a story that was about more than a hardworking, visually impaired mom just making it through each day. I was able to start embracing the bigger world around me.
John and I took a trip to New York to visit my brother and this first of three self-portraits was from a photo in a restaurant we visited. I thoroughly enjoyed that trip. I was in love; I saw New York for the first time and I was entering a new phase in my life. This painting was done in watercolors.
A few years later, I took a trip with my son to London, where my same brother was then living and working. That is also the trip where my son whisked me off to Paris for a couple days. This next portrait is from a photo my son took of me while we were traveling on a Paris train. This was my first European trip and I was overwhelmed and amazed. This painting was done in pastels.
Most recently, my pastel instructor asked our class to do self-portraits. In this most recent portrait, I chose to work on a photo taken of me from the Passionate Focus exhibit I’ve been jurried into for the last several years. It is done in pastels. I wanted to show how I literally see myself through my vision impairment so I worked on the painting and then blurred it. There is nothing I see clearly at this point and I wanted to portray that.
What do artists want to say about themselves? What are they trying to relay and what do viewers see in those portraits? When I think about my own self-portraits, I remember the places in my life where I was, what I was experiencing, and what I was learning about myself. Interestingly, my most current self-portrait may be blurrier than others but this is the time in my life that I am the most clear about who I am and I know myself the best.
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