Artist's Statement

 

"When you disguise yourself you immediately feel more powerful,"
--David Page

 

I am intrigued with the constantly altering nature of internal and external identity, specifically the differences between what a person looks like and their internal condition. I have centered an examination of myself via self-portraiture only because I am the only human I can evaluate from both an internal and external perspective. Through various approaches to self-portraiture which include drawings, marionettes and the installed environment, I want to set up a dialogue between the metamorphic nature of self image, the internal and external landscape, and the potential for a viewer to become the author of a work as well as its audience on the basis of a shared humanity.


The self-portraiture in my work takes the form of charcoal drawings on paper and articulated puppet forms installed in an environment. Both types of portraits are designed around my facial and body structure but are not intended to be strict representations of my appearance. Instead, the two versions of portraits are intended to be records of specific internal and external conditions that I feel define my identity. These records contain a heightened sense of emotion and dramatic flair that I perceive as necessary elements to engage and communicate effectively with an audience. The portraits also function as masks as no one portrait is an exact match of either my appearance or internal condition but rather a stylized version of it, emphasizing elements of the body and face I feel to be most expressive of specific states of mind. The series of portraits can be realized as a continuum--a metamorphic timeline, reflecting various versions of myself over a set period. The portraits, (excepting the large façade-like triptych) are drawn on similarly sized paper and hung at eye level so that they might mimic a series of mirrors; reflecting what I saw while drawing myself and also potentially mirroring aspects of an audience's own internal conditions.


I believe self-portraits are about isolation. Artists of the past drew and painted themselves because they were always around even when models were unavailable or were too costly. I draw myself because I wish to explore how isolation has affected me; specifically how I create images of myself as a detached and directionless entity. It is difficult to explain the necessity to draw oneself-to re-create one's image is an attempt to validate one's existence by documenting it. I house a great fear of having nothing to leave behind--every moment brings changes which alters both the validity of a self-portrait and the individual on which it was based. When I have finished a portrait I feel I have made a document of a moment; a specific state of emotional and physical being that may or may not exist again. While I am interested in showing a resemblance to myself I am also interested in showing myself as a potential 'everyman' figure--a specific example of flawed humanity, a highly emotive, precariously sensitive female human with a distinct desire for inclusion.


Contemporary Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum has made his own tradition as a 'self revealer' and self-appointed narcissist. Painting in the style of the old Baroque masters, Nerdrum's self portraits quote directly from the portrait style of Rembrandt's age in both composition and costume. Nerdrum's self portraits and narratives operate with the unified theme of "showing man's innermost self, to provide us with a mirror of the soul. The mirrored soul Nerdrum would show most often was, like in Rembrandt's case, his own," (Pettersson, 1998). "I am in everyone and reappear in everybody. It takes one to know one," says Nerdrum. In this slightly flippant but apparently serious statement, there is an element of truth. To closely examine one's own nature often bleeds light onto the nature of others.


The sense of confrontation in a self-portrait is largely controlled by the gaze of the subject, directional lighting and suggestion of physical presence through lifelike scale. In Rembrandt's "Self Portrait with Beret and Turned up Collar" executed in 1659, there is a great sense of contact between the painted surface and the viewer. By using a dramatic and uniform lighting, the specific flaws and textures that make up Rembrandt's aging face are clearly visible. A viewer can sense the stories inherent in the artist's facial landscape. Rembrandt chose to paint himself in the extreme foreground of the picture plane, emphasizing his importance as the only focus in the work; the background is vacantly dark and thus highlights him further. The specificity of Rembrandt's self-portrait emphasizes his role as a member of mortal humanity. There is a vulnerability and honesty in his self-portrayal generated by specific unflinching detail and a direct un-romanticized portrayal of facial incongruities. However, the grandness of the size of the head, direct clear gaze and fine state of dress he paints himself in reminds us that he holds himself in a certain high regard. I intend for my drawn portraits to function with a definite sense of aliveness; with the idea that the being portrayed through line is of a very specific self.


I desire people to take the time to dissect my work. I very consciously construct my pictures so the formal elements of a composition contribute to the content of the portrait. The figural drawings I create often exist in ambiguously stark environments. The majority of the portraits have simple backgrounds to emphasize the isolation and spiritual vacuum the subject exists in. I have chosen charcoal as my main drawing tool because the high contrast of black lines on white paper is elegant and dramatic. I feel color would distract from the harshness and immediacy of the forms. I believe excessive tonality would also be a detriment. My drawings might appear unfinished but the athletic gestural quality of line is very much connected with how I wish the images to be read. Immediacy of the documentation in the portraits is important as the internal conditions I am trying to record in the portrait are fleeting and impossible to retain.


I engineer interactivity in my work, both through how the directed gaze of a portrait confronts or avoids a viewer and the environment in which the drawings are experienced. The scale of the drawings is life size or larger to facilitate a viewer's involvement with the portraits. I wanted the portraits to be large enough to seem as if they lead life beyond the paper's surface. The work of Italian 17th century Baroque master Caravaggio has been a large influence on my work as his virtuosity with portraying convincing human forms has always been an inspiration. Site-specific to the areas they were painted, Caravaggio's altarpieces sought to involve a viewer in the scene as though s/he could at any moment enter the action of a work. While I am not interested in painting in a church, where Caravaggio's site-specific paintings were executed, I am interested in utilizing the space of the gallery as an arena to display internal conditions. The figures in Caravaggio's works were often large enough that figures were approximately life-size or larger. These compositional features make the forms in a work more accessible, and more theatrically 'real'. I employ this Baroque notion to create monumental and potentially intimidating drawings.


Theatrical stages are arenas for metamorphoses, as changes constantly occur in both the images presented on a stage, the characters involved, and the narrative of the play. The immediacy and visceral impact inherent of being audience and participant in a theatrical space are elements I want to fuse with traditional self-portraiture. I am using installation art as one might construct a stage set; making a space to serve a narrative, house an audience and promote interaction between the art object and the viewer. Louise Bourgeois, a French sculptor and installation artist, made a series of five square 'cells' in 1993, which took the form of wire cages and operated as autobiographical allegories. The entrance to one cell in particular, The Arch of Hysteria, was unique among the five others because an enclosure of metal doors blocked all sight of the interior, forcing spectators to pass through a walled corridor. This tactic emphasized the element of surprise. I am attempting to use the same element of the unknown by placing part of my work through and archway and behind a curtain-the audience must breach the boundary I have placed before them to see what lies beyond it. "When you experience pain, you can withdraw and protect yourself. But the security of the lair can also be a trap," Bourgeois says. I have made my installation space as a refuge; it is a place I am housing a version of myself in, a version of myself that is grotesque, which is in pain, hidden behind a curtain in the same manner as a carnival sideshow freak. The 'lair' I have created is both a repository and a prison. The creation an art-containment space allows the artist to manipulate how viewers experience that art. Installation art is largely based on how it can manipulate the viewer's experience of time and visceral response. I am very interested in manipulating the experience and interpretation of my art by utilizing such theatrical measures.


The work of Julie Taymor, a contemporary director and designer of numerous original and adapted theatrical productions, utilizes masks and puppetry as a defining element in her art, exploiting the virtuosity of puppets to add both physical and thematic dimension to her interpretations of various plays. (Blumenthal, 1995). In Taymor's work with psychodrama, the power of the mask was emphasized: "If you can put on another face," Taymor says, "you can hide your own persona, and other parts that are locked away will be able to gain expression-which is why masks are liberating for the actor," The puppet and mask behave as stylizing elements, which simplify and focus aspects of human nature and the individual. Masks and puppets can also imply entire physical characters by referencing various cultural traditions. Puppets manipulate an audiences' impression about the nature of identity and aliveness (Blumenthal, 1995). Manipulated from an unseen source, they become an illusion of life and carry with them references to theatrical magic and fantasy. I utilize the puppet to give an illusion of dimension and animation in a kind of self-portraiture that is unattainable through drawing alone. The presence of two marionette forms (i.e. the vulture and the woman) exist in my work to form an allegorical narrative that is intended to reflect both traditional and personal themes. The vulture has clear relations to death and decay and its display alongside the grotesquely scaled female form might indicate that she (a version of myself) is in danger of death or is in a state of decay. The marionettes are actors in an internal stage set that is my mind. Various interpretation of the imagery is not only allowed, but it is encouraged. By presenting versions of myself in varied contexts I am not only experimenting with the language of self-portraiture; I am experimenting with the universal human language of the body.


The installation space can be seen as a walk-in version of my body. The archway I have constructed functions as a transition between the traditional gallery environment and an individualized space. The arch is intended to be a passage between the abstract sense of internal and external space I have indicated in the drawings as well as a literal conduit to a space that is walled off from the rest of the gallery. The act of the audience's physical experience of penetrating a portal might well be associated with transversing a body passage. The archway's appearance simultaneously suggests an organic structure resonant of art nouveau designs, as well as indicating the entrance to a theatrical space (i.e. the red velvet curtain). Theatrical stages are arenas for metamorphoses, as changes constantly occur in both the images presented on a stage, the characters involved, and the narrative of the performance. The immediacy and visceral impact inherent with being audience and participant in a theatrical space are elements I reference in my work.


To facilitate interaction and absorption of the work, I am placing the two kinds of portraits in and around a constructed environment, so that they function on more than one sensory level and complement each other. The portraits both possess the installation space as well as being contained by it and a viewer is penetrating the space, to view and feel and listen to what it might say. I wish to explore elements of myself in self-portraiture for the purposes of diagnosing my own character as well as commenting on the value of identities that are inherent (i.e. unguarded, non-affected states) as opposed to invented (i.e. dramaticized alter-egos). What is outside, our face, our body, our behavior is what others can see and evaluate, and what is inside is ours, what we can hide or reveal at will. The degree to which we are honest with ourselves is reflected in the façades we display.


I have found the later cartoon-narrative style of Philip Guston to be an element of peculiar interest. The iconographic cartoon-like style he adopted replaced his work in abstract expressionism, which was in 1960's America, the 'art of the moment'. His style was specific in that it provided clarity to the message he intended to convey, which was the conditions of his own creative process and identity as an artist. Guston was interested in translating what was going on inside his own mind into representational imagery. By ignoring the style of art that was 'en vogue' in the 1960's and creating his own style, Guston made a genuine attempt to paint an individual-specific truth. Resorting to iconic/stylized objects and figures, Guston often represented himself in his later paintings as a monocular, balding head. "I got sick and tired of all that Purity," Guston said in defense of his later style, "I wanted to tell stories."


Like Guston, I wish to explore the many stories inherent in my identity. I fear that my artistic aspirations will appear shallow to an uninformed public and are only concerned with a 'sick' kind of self-obsession. I understand that a fascination with one's own image and identity could be construed as narcissistic. These are things I am quite aware of and accept. They are also character traits that I am not arrogant enough to assume I monopolize. "The mirror, for me, is not a symbol of vanity, the mirror is the courage to look yourself in the face," declares Louise Bourgeois. In Bourgeois' interpretation of the myth, it is "impossible to decide whether Narcissus drowned himself because he was infatuated with his own beauty or because he could not accept his own image," (Bernadac, 1996). Thus, the issue of an obsessive self-examination can be understood as an act of self-criticism under the perceived guise of infatuation. My work with self-portraiture can safely be understood as operating within this boundary.

Work Cited:
1.) Bernadac, Marie-Laure. Louise Bourgeois. Flammarion. Paris-New York, 1996.
2.) Blumenthal, Eileen and Julie Taymor. Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. New York, 1995.
3.) Calvesi, Maurizio. Caravaggio. Giunti Publishing Group, Florence. 1998.
4.) Rheims, Maurice. Hector Guimard. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers. New York, 1988.
5.) Petterson, Jan Ake. Odd Nerdrum: Storyteller and Self-Revealer. Schehoug & Co. Oslo, Norway, 1998.
6.) Storr, Robert. Guston. Abbeville Press, New York. 1986.
7.) White, Christopher and Quentin Buvelot. Rembrandt by Himself. Yale University Press. London, 1999.

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