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Traditional Art
Self-Portraits, Visual Diaries
Reflecting on 34 years of old-school “selfies”
Drawing your own face teaches you things about yourself you can’t learn any other way. Especially if you work from a mirror instead of a photograph. After hours of staring into your own eyes, the lines, blemishes, and imperfections that cause your greatest insecurities lead to the most interesting brush strokes on your canvas.
When your work is complete, you may go back to judging your appearance based on the superficial standards of the outside world, but during the flow state of creation, you genuinely appreciate your uniqueness.
I’ve been doing self-portraits my whole life, and they all capture my thoughts and feelings better than any photograph. Recently, I went on an archeological dig through my old portfolio cases and slide boxes to unearth as many of these relics as I could find so that I might reconnect with these lost moments in time.
March 3, 1991 (15 years old)
This was completed 25 days before my 16th birthday.
