Self Portrait - 2025 08 19

 

Self portrait - pen and ink, pencil crayon, crayon on paper - 9" x 12" - blind contour - 2014 06 22

Over decades I have practiced self portraiture as a process to make meaning and to practice and explore drawing styles and technique. Blind contour has fascinated me from the beginning. First, it astounds me how accurately the contour lines convey a likeness. Second, the distortions of lines flying off in space add a psychological dimension to the portrait - funny, curious, revealing of something not easily articulated in any other way.

During the 2014 series, I was determined to treat the drawing with serious shading and tone, no matter what the drawing from the blind contour exercise looked like. 

The process of making the blind contour is an exercise of close looking at my own face, looking deeply into my own eyes, an objective study of my hair, my nose, my mouth and my chin. It is a process of diving into the indoctrination of a lifetime of dictates to be 'feminine', to 'act like a girl', to 'wear something pretty'; the parade of manufactured images of what it means to be female, to be an object of desirability, to be pleasing to a male (heteronoramative) gaze; the erasure of women as fully formed, mature, accomplished, intelligent, articulate, talented, passionate, interesting, impactful human beings in their own right. All of these unwanted constructs of what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be my own woman are weighed in every line and every stroke.

I can trace my self portraits across key moments of life change:

1998 - transitioning out of an 18 year marriage to a manipulative, emotionally and mentally abusive husband

2003 - transitioning out of my under graduate in fine arts and figuring out my next steps

2014 - grappling with making my escape from academia and an abusive doctoral supervisor

I have lived with PTSD since I was a child. It has been a hidden disability, even hidden from myself until I sought therapy at the age of 40. My brain works in interesting and perplexing ways. It likes to start things but finds it difficult to finish them. It likes to problem-solve and explore but doesn't have a lot of patience for tedious detail.

Drawing has always had a calming effect on my brain, absorbing my focus and concentrating my imagination.

The making of art has always been fraught with confusing and baffling messages from popular culture, art history and capitalistic patriarchy. How could I, my mere self, have the ambition, the talent, the courage, to make art? Even a simple drawing carries this censure. 

The act of self portraiture is an act of deep resistance to the unfounded and unfair dominance of masculine insecurity and anxiety. I do not need to embody that insecurity or anxiety. I can just do what I want to make sense of the world and my life on this earth. It doesn't have to be profound. It just has to get done.