“There’s no retirement for
an artist, it’s your way of living so there’s no end to it.”
- Henry Moore
So, as previously stated,
one of my retirement goals is to become proficient in the use of gouache, an
opaque medium similar to watercolor.
There are a couple of advantages to gouache. You can thin it with water, so there are no
solvent fumes with which to deal. It’s very portable making it ideal for
painting on location. Your brushes and
palette can be cleaned with soap and water.
And, most important for me, because of its opacity, you can rework areas
and cover up mistakes, a critical feature for me since I tend to rely on the
“trial and error” method often in making determinations while painting. One reason I’ve struggled with watercolor in
the past is its transparency makes recovering from my “experimental excursions”
impossible.
I’m pretty sure that I had
two tubes of gouache in my pencil box at one time. I never explored their potential seriously,
using them more as an occasional supplement to enhance my graphic work. But I am ready to roll up my sleeves and
master their use now. At this point in
my life, I am basically an oil painter who spends months on a single work,
building up layers of paint to arrive at the exact tones and textures I
desire. Yes, I’ve become a bit slow and
fussy, not a horrible thing but not a great one either. I thought it might be a good experience for
me to tackle a new medium, one that might encourage me to be a little more
spontaneous and inventive. After all,
gouache paints and decent watercolor paper are relatively cheap, and there’s
really no preparation involved. So I can
certainly shrug off disappointing results gracefully, abandoning an unpromising
effort in its embryonic stage rather than toiling stubbornly to save the work.
These days, whenever I want
to learn a new technique, I turn to the internet. There I can usually find an endless array of
videos available providing instruction and demonstrations. These videos are really a wonderful resource,
the only problem being that often the quality of the material can be poor or
designed for a lay audience. Some of the
gouache demonstrations were clearly intended for craft enthusiasts, but I did
find a good many that provided professional instruction for artists. From these I got the impression that gouache
could be used very much like oil paint, applied in thick, lush strokes and
built up in layers. This appealed to me
very much, and I was eager to start my first project.
I already knew that I would
work on a series of self-portraits. I
wanted to work freely from a live model, and I recognized that I was the only
model available who was willing to pose for hours at a time, sometimes for
several consecutive days. Another
benefit of using me as my subject matter was that I didn’t have to flatter or
satisfy myself. I could experiment with
this new medium without constraint, portray myself unconventionally, strike unusual
poses and produce unquestionable failures, and I would be fine with that. I couldn’t imagine a volunteer model being as
understanding.
Another predetermination I
had conceived was to get out of my studio.
I had had enough of being locked away in an upstairs workspace, exiled
to some degree away from social interaction and customary activity. I wanted to blast music from the downstairs
stereo while I painted and experience, peripherally at least, the daily comings
and goings of my wife and children.
Probably more important was the fact that though the lighting in my
studio is ideal for someone painting in a fixed area, it was less conducive to
illuminating a model. After years of
trying, I had yet to find a way of satisfactorily lighting my paint surface and
my subject matter. The room was simply
too cluttered with paintings, pads, easels and art materials to provide a lot
of maneuvering space, and the only natural light was provided by one
double-hung window with a southern exposure.
I guess if Virginia Woolf needed “a room of one’s own” for her creative
efforts, I needed a bigger, brighter one for mine. Moving downstairs allowed me to investigate a
number of locations with unique lighting conditions.
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| Gerard Wickham - Kitchen Self-Portrait - 2018 |
In executing my next self-portrait,
I was determined to maintain control of my efforts. After penciling in a light sketch, I used pen
and ink to fix detail; then I applied color in thin washes, incrementally
building up tones. I was too tentative,
the resulting image developing into essentially a toned drawing. To mix it up a bit, I worked this time in our
dining room directly beside a window, portrayed myself head-on rather than in
three quarter view and donned an eccentric earflapped hat to boot.
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| Gerard Wickham - Self-Portrait in Earflapped Hat - 2018 |
So it was back to the drawing board for me. As with the second work, in this image I retained the pen
and ink drawing and jettisoned the underpainting but now was more committed than
before to working loosely. I also wanted
to use bolder colors to suggest form. To
my advantage, I had already gained a partial understanding of how gouache
behaved and recognized that limiting my palette would be advantageous. For this portrait, I wore my black hoodie,
allowing the hood to cast dark shadows over my face. This time I set up my easel in the hallway
beside the side entrance to our home.
Outside light entered through the door’s glass insert, but I was
predominantly lit by a harsh incandescent globe light directly over my head. I chose to stand for this painting because
only in this position could I get the light right. I started at nine in the morning and finished
up at seven in the evening, only stopping briefly for a quick bite to eat at
midday. Not until I walked away from the
easel did I realize that my hands were shaking and I was a bit dizzy. I had definitely pushed myself with this
work…at least, physically so.
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| Gerard Wickham - Hooded Self-Portrait - 2018 |
For the next portrait, I
wanted to paint myself in profile. It
took some effort to arrange two mirrors in the precise positions required to provide
an acceptable side view. I started with
a pencil sketch before moving to pigment.
Maintaining a consistent pose proved rather difficult since I was
working from a reflection twice removed, and my drawing and painting suffered
for it. After working several hours, I
decided that I couldn’t salvage this painting and called it a day.
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| Gerard Wickham - Unfinished Self-Portrait in Profile - 2018 |
I felt that one of the
problems with the previous painting was that I didn’t start work with a formal
conception, meaning that I was relying totally on a visual presentation and was
not applying an intellectual structure to the image. So as I regularly shifted position and
struggled to regain my original pose, my perspective kept varying, contributing
principally to an unsuccessful representation.
Therefore I began my next self-portrait by drawing a series of
perspective lines on my watercolor paper.
I chose to use what I would call an extreme perspective, one that might
be obtained by a mosquito flying directly in front of my face, then I drew my
portrait, forcing my features to conform to my perspective guides. Again to provide some variety, I wore a
knitted winter cap for this portrait and can attest that as the spring season
brought warmer temperatures I began to regret that choice. After producing a rough sketch in pencil, I
used pen and ink to fix the detail. I
had wanted to record my pen and ink drawing before painting but forgot and had
already painted in the eyes before taking my photo. Oh well, you can get the general idea.
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| Gerard Wickham - Preliminary Drawing - 2018 |
I had purchased a larger
watercolor pad prior to my start on this work, and the larger format definitely
facilitated my efforts. All of the
earlier paintings were completed within single day sessions; but numerous days
of work went into this piece. I was back
at the kitchen window, and, having marked with labeled masking tape strips the
positions of my easel, mirror and chair, I could set up my work area each day
precisely as it was when I had started.
I carefully applied semitransparent layers of gouache to my drawing. The heightened coloration and exaggerated
perspective reminded me of some Early Renaissance works, so I thought it would
be fun to insert a sprawling landscape in the background. A photograph I had recently taken while hiking
on the Appalachian Trail served as the ideal
source. Just as with my head, after drawing
in the detail with pen and ink, I applied gouache in thin layers in my
landscape. The resulting image is
awkward and disconcerting, but I’m inexplicably satisfied with it.
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| Gerard Wickham - Self-Portrait in Knitted Cap - 2018 |
I still wasn’t fully certain
that I was using gouache as intended, so I went back to the internet and
watched more instructional YouTube videos.
In one of them, a woman cautioned against using cheap paints, singling
out Reeves as a prime example of a substandard gouache. Of course, I had been using a Reeves set of
18 colors in the execution of all the previous works. I’ve never been an advocate of the use of
topnotch materials; in fact I often deliberately purchase very affordable
supplies because I can use them more aggressively, without concern of the
cost. For instance, I intentionally seek
out cheap brushes because I like to beat the hell out of them when painting and
don’t care if I go through five or ten in the creation of a single work. But I guessed it couldn’t hurt to give a
better quality paint a try. For about
$25, I ordered a set of Winsor & Newton paints which included the following
6 colors: black, white, red, blue, yellow and green. The set was pretty basic, but I wasn’t too
concerned - after many years of oil painting, I’m pretty adept at mixing
colors. I would have to say, after using
the Winsor & Newton colors on the following self-portrait, that they did
cover better, didn’t become murky and could establish reasonable highlights
over underpainting. Purchasing them was
definitely a wise investment.
Even
though my earlier attempt at a portrait in profile was an unquestionable
failure, I did like the format and wished to give it another try in the future. But I didn’t want to use the double mirror
technique again, so I cheated a bit and took a timed selfie under my glaring studio
lights. I posed in a hallway before a
white wall, lit from behind, my face in shadow.
To keep it interesting, I contorted my face in a fierce snarl. Thankfully, I got from the photos exactly
what I was looking for. After sketching
my likeness in pencil and spending several days painting, I completed work on
the image below.
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| Gerard Wickham - Snarling Self-Portrait in Profile - 2018 |
I am uncertain as to what
I’ve accomplished with this series. I do know that I’ve achieved some level of
mastery in the use gouache. However I
also wonder if these works form any cohesive statement or merely represent a
string of independent experiments. I
believe I may have suggested earlier on in this entry that my choices of
headgear and facial expression resulted from my simple desire to provide some
variety and technical challenge to my efforts.
But then again I’m sure you could ask a thousand artists to paint a
series of six self-portraits and not one would come up with the same array of
imagery. Surely there is something of
myself in each of these self-portraits.
And perhaps approaching them as technical trials freed me from self-consciousness
and allowed me to more fully express my inner workings. Who knows?
(Considering this bizarre sampling of imagery, maybe I should be less
than enthusiastic about admitting this.)
I have a particular weakness
for self-portraits. If we can agree that
all art whether portrait, landscape, still-life or abstraction is a visual
representation of the artist’s persona, it naturally follows that a self-portrait
is most conducive to a successful and penetrating expression of that persona. Interestingly, some artists (Gustav Klimt ,
for instance) never painted a self-portrait, while others like Rembrandt and
Van Gogh arguably achieved their greatest results while peering at themselves
in a mirror. The intimacy of self
evaluation may have repulsed some artists while others found it intensely appealing.
In
light of my affection for self-portraits, I thought it would be fun to take a
look at some of my favorites and provide a little informal commentary along
with the images.
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| Edvard Munch - Self-Portrait with Cigarette - 1895 |
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| Max Beckmann - Self-Portrait in Tuxedo - 1927 |
A century ago, it was very important for artists
to assert their professionalism and refinement.
Historically, artists were viewed as craftsmen or artisans and not as
intellectuals. There actually is an old
French expression “bête comme un peintre” which translates as “dumb as a
painter”. In the firmly structured caste system of late
nineteenth century society artists struggled to achieve respectability and
status. As strange as it may seem,
artists commonly worked in formal attire.
And, of course, the addition of a smoldering cigarette in hand would
have suggested the ultimate in sophistication back then. It’s interesting how similar these two works
executed thirty years apart are. But
while Edvard Munch presents himself as haunted and spectral, Max Beckmann displays
a concrete and confrontational presence.
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| Gustave Courbet - The Desperate Man - 1844 to 45 |
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| Gustave Courbet - Bonjour Monsieur Courbet - 1854 |
Regarding nineteenth century artists striving
for respectability, it’s interesting to compare these two paintings
by Gustave Courbet. At the age of twenty
five, he sees himself as a desperate man, perhaps one on the verge of madness. Most likely, the economic and emotional
stress of being a social outsider has taken quite a toll on him. A decade
later, he has achieved some recognition and even depicts himself being
respectfully greeted by a gentleman on the roadside. The gentleman doffs his hat to him, while
Courbet tilts his head backward, causing his beard to be thrust confidently
outward.
Some artists deliberately
denigrate themselves, defying the urge to achieve acceptance and respectability.
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| Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Self-Portrait with Model - 1910 |
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
establishes himself as a Bohemian, his nude form barely draped in a colorful
robe - his model, clad in lingerie, is not a paid worker but an intimate
associate.
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| Egon Schiele - Self-Portrait with Arm Twisted above Head - 1910 |
In the same year, the
Austrian Egon Schiele portrays himself as a degenerate, an individual gripped
by animal urges. His hair is an unruly
mane, and his raised arm exposes a scraggly tuft of underarm hair. His leathery flesh is scarred with
lines. Scarcely shrouded by atrophied
muscles, his skeletal frame protrudes awkwardly through his skin. There is a wariness and carnal blankness in
his expression.
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| Chuck Close - Big Self-Portrait - 1967 to 68 |
Chuck Close would suggest
that he unemotionally reproduces the exactitudes of a photograph without regard
for his subject matter, but, of course, that’s not true. I’m sure that Close carefully selected the black
and white source photograph for his Big Self-Portrait
with the intent of shocking his audience with his own repulsiveness. He portrays himself unshaven, his greasy hair
uncombed, a cigarette clutched between his lips. His audience is granted a view up his
nose. His large, plastic horn-rimmed
glasses rest solidly on his protruding ears.
He is the perfect counterculture villain of the late sixties, the
radical nightmare of the establishment, and we onlookers cannot help but be
amused at how ruthlessly he documents his slovenly appearance. And, by the way, if you’ve never seen this
painting, you might be surprised to learn that it is extremely large, nearly
nine feet tall and seven feet wide (which only intensifies the comic absurdity
of the image).
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| Alice Neel - Self-Portrait - 1980 |
This is Alice Neel’s only
painting of herself. Unconventionally,
she chose to record herself nude at the age of 80, four years before her
death. She coldly documents the impact
the passing years have had on her form.
A mass of white hair crowns her head, and her sagging breasts droop over
her swollen belly. But, as with all of
her portraits, Neel takes a humanist view of her subject. In spite of her humiliating situation, she
maintains an undeniable dignity. Her
eyes are sharp and alert as she studies her features; her mouth contorts in a
frown of concentration. She returns the
viewer’s gaze quizzically, as if to ask, “And you don’t think this will happen
to you?” (Excuse the digression, but I
wish to relate an unusual connection I have with this painting. In 1981, Neel had a solo show at SUNY Stony
Brook’s Fine Art Center
Often how an artist views
him or herself is determined to a very great degree by the aesthetic
predominating in the era during which he or she lives. For instance, Philipp Otto Runge portrays
himself as the ultimate Romantic figure in 1810. With his soulful eyes, sunken cheeks,
generous lips, unruly hair and upturned collar, he could easily pass as the
hero of one of Byron’s poems. And I’d
bet that Runge believed himself to be presenting a very personal image of
himself rather than a Romantic archetype.
That’s the way we are swayed aesthetically; it’s really quite insidious.
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| Philipp Otto Runge - Self-Portrait - 1810 |
In the era of Modernism,
conventions changed rapidly and within a few short years the aesthetics
influencing how artists filtered reality could transform dramatically how they
viewed themselves. Käthe Kollwitz
embraces an Expressionist idiom, striving for an essential image that eschews
intellectual sophistication and aims for emotional density. She records her image in a woodcut, a
difficult and physically demanding medium which had been in use in Europe from the late Middle Ages through the end of
sixteenth century but was abandoned for less challenging printing techniques. She depicts just her visage, indicating her
hair minimally and omitting any evidence of the neck or shoulders upon which
her head rests. The print is in black
and white, and there is no attempt to conceal the rough cuts used to fashion
the image. The superfluous and the
pretty have been eliminated, leaving only the indispensable and elemental.
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| Kathe Kollwitz - Self-Portrait - 1923 |
Henri Matisse was one of the
founders of Fauvism, another dialect of Expressionism, but, in the hands of the
French, Expressionism had a very different flavor than the German variety. For Matisse, Expressionism was essentially
about making aesthetic decisions that commonly violated established conventions
in order to achieve an extremely sophisticated visual language. As with Kollwitz, he has pared down
information to a minimum in his self-portrait, but Matisse is seeking to achieve
a perfect balance between line and form, between technique and illusion in his
work. And, most critically, he uses
color non-naturalistically, employing a heightened palette while realizing a precarious
harmony between tones. Kollwitz’s
self-portrait is a primitive beacon, a timeless totem, while that of Matisse is
a flawless arrangement of line and color.
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| Henri Matisse - Self-Portrait in a Striped T-shirt - 1906 |
In 1948, Frida Kahlo adopts
the principles of Surrealism in creating her self-portrait. She wears a traditional Tehuana headdress
which isolates her facial features against an intricately patterned web. Certainly, most viewers of this work could
not identify this regional Mexican dress and would only see it as bizarre and
other-worldly. There is no attempt at
modeling here. Her face is nearly
uniformly lit, and the lace work is recorded in almost manic detail. Her exotic outfit, the floral patterning in
the lace, the cartoony tears that fall from her eyes, the mesh of plant life
seen behind her head and the bird imagery in her necklace suggest a symbolic
interpretation that the viewer is unable to grasp. All we are able to glean from this work is
that this is a very unusual portrayal of a pained woman with roots established
in both the natural world and traditional Mexican culture. From this starting point, the viewer is free
to create his or her own fantasy.
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| Frida Kahlo - Self-Portrait in Medallion - 1948 |
I’m truly amazed when
examining the following two self-portraits executed by Pablo Picasso. In the first, Picasso has fully appropriated
the Symbolist-Expressionist language which was still relatively new in 1901. He presents himself set amongst intense blues
and grays, only his harshly lit face animated by pale flesh tones and rose
colored lips. Something of sickness and
death wafts about this figure, but there is also a spark of intellect in his
features to counteract this perception.
Within a mere six years, Picasso has developed a personal language that
will become known as Cubism. In the 1907
self-portrait, Picasso’s face has become distorted and masklike; his features,
particularly the eyes, are emblematic. The
image is composed of a series of repeated diagonals which fracture space and
defy a traditional spatial interpretation.
Picasso has made the leap from imitation to innovation.
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| Pablo Picasso - Self-Portrait - 1901 |
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| Pablo Picasso - Self-Portrait - 1907 |
In self-portraits, artists
consciously select precisely how they appear, what they wear, their facial
expressions and their locations.
Brushwork, paint texture and tonal range are of equal importance.
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| Rembrandt - Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-up Collar - 1659 |
In his self-portrait of
1938, Pierre Bonnard opposes Rembrandt’s approach to portraiture. Bonnard’s face is in shadow, his expression
nearly indiscernible. His form, small
and insignificant, merges with background elements, a network of repeated
verticals and horizontals. His clothing
is ordinary and unpretentious. He
appears to be wearing a robe over a white undershirt. The artist does not disguise the fact that he
is seeing his image in a bathroom mirror.
This is the mundane image of a man going through his everyday
rituals. Bonnard is just another
compositional element is his endeavor to document in light and color the quiet
sanctuary he has established for himself in his small house on the
Mediterranean. While Rembrandt presents
his circumstances as unique and specific, Bonnard takes solace in the
universality and anonymity of the life he leads.
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| Pierre Bonnard - Self-Portrait - 1938 |
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| Vincent Van Gogh - Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin - 1888 |
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| Vincent Van Gogh - Self-Portrait - 1889 |
It’s funny to consider that
Lucian Freud was a very private painter who wanted to avoid the possibility of
his personal life impacting on how his artistic production was perceived. He was nearly impossible to reach and gave
very few interviews. Even some of his
children didn’t have his phone number. But
for a man who wanted to retain his anonymity, Freud seemed bent on establishing
himself as a conspicuous personage.
Though he was only married twice, he had numerous affairs, some
estimating the number of his lovers to be close to 500. Fourteen children that he fathered can be
documented, but that number may be much higher.
Some of his children had no knowledge of the existence of the
others. Freud painted sexually explicit,
nude portraits of volunteer models including several of his own children. These paintings stressed the animal essence
of his subjects and sought to pierce their civilized façades to reveal their
inner workings. Sometimes he portrayed
nude models along with dogs or rats or used extremely obese models for his nude
figure paintings. He was an unquestionable
eccentric, a regular gambler and workaholic.
He frequently got into conflicts with the galleries that represented him
and even became belligerent with strangers on the street. He lived in unusual circumstances, allowing
his studio and living space to become cluttered with painting supplies, drop
cloths, dirty clothes, newspapers, food containers and other trash. In this magnificent upper body self-portrait,
Freud portrays himself in his mid-60s, shirtless, crusty and irascible,
seemingly substantiating the public’s perception of him that he tried
assiduously to elude.
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| Lucian Freud - Reflection - 1985 |
Contemporary Norwegian
artist Odd Nerdrum also has a reputation as an eccentric. While a student at the Art Academy of Oslo,
Nerdrum became obsessed with the art of Rembrandt and Caravaggio and rejected
the principles of Modernism. He clashed
with his instructors and fellow students who wished Norway
Initially, Nerdrum painted
dramatic images of contemporary events: the death in prison of Andreas Baader,
Vietnamese boat people, victims of abuse and sensational arrests. These works addressed political and social issues
and, in my opinion, are unsuccessful and would have been ignored. With time, Nerdrum began to present images of
an imagined world that may exist in a time long past or a post-apocalyptic
future. This primordial world is inhabited
by men and women dressed in flowing robes, animal skins and peculiar headgear
who carry weapons, engage in primitive rituals, drink from stagnant pools and
defecate communally in natural settings.
Nerdrum paints amputees and disemboweled corpses…nudes and
hermaphrodites…bricks and babies swaddled like sausages…a flayed ram and decapitated
horse heads…warriors, cannibals and mendicants, which I suppose sounds
pretty…well, odd; except that the technical virtuosity with which the artist
executes his paintings demands that the viewer take his subject matter
seriously. I believe Nerdrum is
constructing an elemental world in which human emotions and motivations are
unambiguously exposed as opposed to the circumstances within our modern society
in which these things are deliberately cloaked.
In 1997, Nerdrum outraged critics and connoisseurs by admitting his work
was just kitsch, disassociating himself from “high art” because he continues to
be committed to the narrative, emotional content and fine craftsmanship, the
antithesis of what he sees as the Modernist credo.
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| Odd Nerdrum - Frontal Self-Portrait - 1994 to 95 |
In Woman and Art: Contested Territory, a book which explores gender
bias in art and the art world, Edward Lucie-Smith criticized this self-portrait
by Stanley Spencer as expressing the male painter’s determination to possess
his female model. Before going any
further, I must question why this desire on the part of the artist should be
viewed as negative. Surely, many an
artwork has been initiated through sexual desire; and if this painting
accurately reflects Spencer’s mindset, should we disregard it or hold it in
disdain. Why would we proscribe a basic
human drive? It seems that to apply a
blanket approach to such a complex issue is counterproductive and
misleading. To give Lucie-Smith credit,
he does admit that this painting results from a rather bizarre biographical
history and addresses themes beyond the desire for sexual possession.
Spencer was married with two
daughters when Patricia Preece entered his life. She was a bit of a flirt and soon had Spencer
twisted round her little finger. The
artist traveled with Preece and showered her with gifts, going so far as to
sign over the deed to his home to her.
Finally his wife, no longer able to tolerate the situation, divorced
him. That freed Spencer to marry Preece,
who had never ended her long-term lesbian relationship with Dorothy
Hepworth. According to accounts, Spencer
was excluded from his marriage night bedroom which was occupied by Preece and
Hepworth; and the two women went off on a honeymoon while Spencer remained
behind to finish a painting. It’s
believed that the marriage was never consummated. So the circumstances Spencer documents in
this work are very complicated.
Plainly Preece’s nude form
is on display here and could be construed to affirm a sexual connection to the
artist...as a kind of trophy of his conquest.
But there are some major clues that something is off here. The artist is also portrayed unclothed,
atypical for one wishing to express dominion over a lover; on the contrary, it
places the two individuals on an equal footing.
And Preece is not presented as a centerfold model. At the time of this painting, Spencer was 46
years old and Preece 43. Both are
showing signs of decline. Preece’s
sagging breasts display furrowed nipples; her iliac crest juts out from her
hip. Her dark eyebrows are unmistakably penciled
onto a face defined by dipping valleys and swelling hillocks. Spencer doesn’t fare any better under his
scrutiny. His boney back is capped by an
unnaturally long neck. Beneath a strange
bowl cut, he sports large, round spectacles; his weak chin dissolves into
drooping jowls. Preece, appearing bored
and detached, looks away from the artist.
Spencer is alert and aware, one could even say aroused. This is definitely not a work about fantasy;
it describes the complex relations between two very real people. There is no conquest here, only unrequited
desire on his part and unenthusiastic compliance on hers.
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| Stanley Spencer - Self-Portrait with Patricia Preece - 1937 |
So having examined quite a
few of my favorite self-portraits, a number of general observations have been
made. Some artists paint themselves to
assert their legitimacy and respectability, while others do so to expose
themselves as outsiders and dissenters.
Often a self-portrait is used to declare the artist’s allegiance to a specific
movement. At times, an artist’s lifestyle
(or perhaps I should say life story) is so compelling that it is nearly
impossible to separate image from biography, the self-portrait becoming merely illustrative
of the salacious myths which have taken root concerning an eccentric
personality. I’m certain that most of
the self-portraits presented here served a therapeutic function for the
artists. In open opposition to the
accepted mores of his times, Schiele needed to reveal himself as a sexual being
wracked by animal urges. Kahlo wished to
express the suffering she experienced from her unsuccessful marriage with Diego
Rivera, while Spencer felt compelled to document his complicated relationship
with Preece. Rembrandt proclaims his
disillusionment and exasperation with a world that has refused to recognize his
genius. Van Gogh expresses a crippling
alienation from his society as he struggles in vain to maintain his
sanity. Neel explores the disfiguring
changes that time has inflicted on her body as she anticipates her inevitable
demise. Hopefully each of these artists
gained some solace and healing through this process of self-revelation and
self-analysis.
As for my series of
self-portraits, I’ve depicted myself in many different guises. I’ve appeared harried and anxious…ridiculous
and clownish…dark and diminished…distorted by rage. There are echoes of Close’s willingness to
mock himself and Kollwitz’s somber self-examination in these works. I had no
intention of displaying these works publicly, so egoism doesn’t intrude
here. I’m painting alone in the privacy
of my home, my public persona banished.
Technically, each of these works is flawed. Though I did make some progress in mastering
the medium of gouache, I didn’t come close to attaining the fluidity and
spontaneity I was seeking. I am
undeterred though and will continue to experiment with the medium in the months
ahead. I think there’s one thing that my
readers and I can agree on: we’ve seen enough of my ugly mug, and it’s time for
me to move on to other subject matter.
With the warmer weather having arrived, perhaps some plein air
landscapes will follow.
As always, I encourage
readers to comment here. If you would
prefer to comment privately, you can email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.
