Is self portraiture the pursuit of a narcissist?
From time to time I like to focus on just self portraits. I sometimes wonder if this ever comes across as narcissistic, but the truth is that I, and other portrait artists I’m sure, often feel more comfortable with the freedom of painting our own faces.
For me the self portraits give me full freedom of expression — the ability to experiment and sometimes make mistakes. I can also use my own face as a conduit for the mood I am in at the current time. The process of painting them can be very cathartic; a means to release inner turmoil or excess energy.
Other artists I admire from the past also used their own reflection as a means of artistic development. If you look at the likes of Rembrandt you can really see his confidence growing through his self portraits. To me they are some of the most visceral paintings ever created.
If I am working on a commission of someone else, I will talk to the client and gauge the mood they want the painting to reflect. If it’s a partner of the client I’m painting, a young woman for example, I would avoid throwing the paint on to make her skin with an impasto layer. Instead I would make sure she was rendered in a sensitive way and that her features were in exact proportion. This doesn’t mean it is a creative process that I don’t enjoy — I love painting commissions and there are many creative hurdles to cross on each journey. However, there are limitations.
With painting myself there are no limitations.
In my recent small piece, 'Self Portrait: The New Wave' (above), I decided to see how thickly I could apply the paint without losing the realism. I also wanted to paint with speed and energy; a one day alla prima. This wouldn’t be possible if painting someone else — I might be asked, quite rightly, ‘why the lumpy forehead?' or told 'my nose is a lot smoother than that’.
In the above piece, Self Portrait: Summer Light, I wanted to look at how to capture the vibratory effect of light on the face in the same way Van Gough managed to create that energy in his work. It was only through experimentation that I could do this. I used impasto layers in the priming stage, created with my own homemade medium of plaster and binders. I layered this on with a sculptural effect, while trying to work as painterly as possible as I couldn't use soft brushes to penetrate the texture. Instead I used a small palette knife with pre-mixed paint. I learned so much from this experimental process.
This painting above, ‘Self Study II’, to me was a breakthrough piece — something I could never have achieved without using myself as a model and having the freedom to go where I wanted. I painted this alla prima in one day and just wanted to focus in on how the skin tones could be manipulated for painterly effect. In the same way Lucian Freud painted in his later work...but with a microscopic precision rather than the larger brush strokes of Freud. I settled for synthetic brushes using dapples and dots thickly applied with flesh tones. This painting is often greeted with 'you didn’t do yourself any favours with this one' — which to me is a compliment!
The self portrait can also be used as a conduit for the current zeitgeist. I can use strong light and shadow to reflect the human condition, plus I just love the way you can manipulate paint so much when shadow hits the face. This self portrait reflected the mood of us being restricted in 2020-21, using the light in the shape of prison bars. The painting wasn’t just about darkness though, and hinted at the hope for the future to come.
These portraits for me are solely about painting for painting’s sake — just for the love of the material of oil paint. I think any art or craft should be about the relationship between subject and material. In my opinion, a lot of contemporary realist paintings do not do justice to the material. In an age of airbrushed perfection, I feel the job of the artist is to create something more human and visceral and the medium of oil paint (ground pigments from the earth in natural oil) is the perfect vehicle to do so.
To me, my portraits are the antithesis of the narcissistic airbrushed social media world. They are honest, they celebrate our human flaws and bring them to the surface, and show the vulnerabilities of the human condition.
Work mentioned above is available to purchase — please reply to this email if you have any questions or would like a price list.