“Becoming,” self-portrait #3

“Becoming,” 14″ x 18″, oil on canvas board, $700

Third in the series of 5 self-portraits. The series is about me, exploring me, exploring what it takes to become an artist after all these years of denying myself and trying many, many things instead. I’m trying to let the pictures paint themselves as much as possible. Myself the idle passenger, the casual observer changing the results of the experiment simply because I’m observing it.

“Becoming” had a few inspirations. First was the idea that I read somewhere that you should paint the human face with a yellowish upper, reddish middle, and bluish lower. While I understand the reasoning, my personal opinion is that you should describe the face you see, HOW you see it. How YOU see it. So, being the impish little prick I am, I exaggerated that statement in a pseudo-mockery of it. Because I reject things dictated to me by self-proclaimed experts.

I also wanted to do a painting without any white at all. And I succeeded in that – probably for the first time ever.

Burnt Umber has been my nemesis. It always turns to mud. So I re-introduced it here in the underpainting and let a bunch of it show. Look, mama, burnt umber and no mud!

“Becoming” is about edges, mostly. The paint is becoming something because I drew in the outline in my colorful black (or my hand-mixed Payne’s Gray, if you please), intentionally losing edges and intentionally bleeding color without abandon. I put some straight black on one side to push some contrast, but I wanted to keep the painting dark. I’m becoming, but I’m not there yet. I may never be what I am to become, but I am in the process, emerging from the darkness, pushing your fucking rules aside, rejecting what you’re telling me, letting me be me.

Which is all at once intensely simple while simultaneously eluding me at every turn.