Self imagery in art and in my work

Welcome to the second entry of my art blog!

It's been more than a week since the first entry, but hopefully you don't mind too much and will find it interesting and/or helpful in some capacity.

If you have any suggestions for entries, or if you want me to talk about something specific, please do not hesitate to let me know by commenting here, by DMing me on my instagram (here) or emailing me (here).

Today I will muse about self-portraiture, which is something I've been doing a lot since moving to New York in 2013. Before moving here, even when I did use a picture of myself as reference for a drawing, I was pretty adamant about how it was not a self-portrait, even if by definition it absolutely was a self-portrait. I suppose I didn't *see* myself in those and wasn't trying to draw myself.

I have the hypothesis I started self-portraits when I moved here because I wanted to see myself with my own eyes in this city, because I couldn't believe it.
After maybe sort of starting to believe it, the self-portraits also started getting an introspective layer to them.
The first deep conversation I had with myself about being a woman and confronting abuse happened with the series of self-portraits as a victim, you can see that work on my website (here).

With that series of drawings I talked with myself about how scared/uncomfortable I felt and didn't realize it until more than a year later, how unsafe I was, how bizarre everything felt, how I also felt confused because there were still some very enjoyable moments. Moments that even now I remember as fun.
Then I thought about other romantic relationships I had, what I thought I had to do "as a woman". In arguments, in sex, in the relationship, vs what I actually want for myself in those aspects and what I really think is a nice, healthy relationship.

Around the time I was producing this work, I read Perez Gauli's book "El cuerpo en venta", which is in Spanish and I don't know if it's translated, but it talks a little about women using portraiture to take back ownership of ourselves, or just find who we are, because we've sort of had that dictated for us. Here is a PDF in Spanish of the book, not sure about whether it's available in English, but I also haven't looked super hard.

After having dealt with that stuff, I've kept making self portraits. Sometimes the self-portrait is so I can see myself as something cool and strong (like in my drawing "Self-portrait as Baphomet", or "Self-portrait as a Banshee"), or to study the nuance of my own face/body (like in my drawing "Self-portrait Mask" or "Self-portrait as Venus").

An artist I love the shit out of is Anne Harris, whose oeuvre revolves mostly around self-portraiture, and just makes amazing imagery. Check out her paintings (here).

Here is a link to the wikipedia article on the self-portraiture for kicks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portrait.

Thanks for reading and please let me know your thoughts on self-portraiture, and let me know if you'd like me to write about something specific. Cheers!

Patience

Welcome to the very first *official* entry to my art blog. I think I'm gonna try to do this once a week, if you have any suggestions for entries, or if you want me to talk about something specific, please do not hesitate to let me know by commenting here, by DMing me on my instagram (here) or emailing me (here)

Patience
noun

- the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. 

- an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay: to have patience with a slow learner. 

- quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence: to work with patience.

 

I think my favorite of those definitions is the third one, because it reminds me of what I try to aim for when I'm drawing: steady perseverance and even-tempered care.

 

This is not to say that I achieve it immediately, because often when I start a drawing how accurate it looks right from the beginning and how quickly I can finish are things that make me very anxious, but accuracy and productivity also require patience and practice.

 

Wanting our drawing to be accurate from the very first line is almost delusional. There has to be something on the paper which we can then make into an accurate drawing (if, of course, accuracy is even what we're aiming for cuz I sure as shit don't necessarily go for that every time).

 

So going from a blank piece of paper to a finished drawing is a journey during which we are constantly trying to find our way, and I put it this way because for me it feels as though I'm always making small corrections and looking for something.

 

I must remind myself of the search and being patient really quite often while I'm drawing. Once I'm able to draw for several sessions (I work in intervals of 20min work - 10min break, this btw is loosely based on the Pomodoro Technique), I can get into a groove where I feel more focused and rather studious. It's super satisfying for me to "find" the nuance in a portrait or in a figure, with a slightly darker mark or a sharper transition, and dealing with the entirety of the landscape the portrait or human figure is.

 

Feel free to let me know what you think about being patient in the context of art or in any other situation. Sometimes it's not easy!

First post!

Good morning/afternoon/evening to all!

I have been musing about getting back to blogging whenever I want to rant about something, elaborate/publicize my thoughts on a specific drawing, when I want to talk about a show I went to, or whatever it is.
So here it is, a blog you can now come to if Instagram isn't your shit or you're up to your tits of it.
Thank you for reading and hanging out <3