With my self-portrait, I really wanted to make this project my own and fully present multiple layers and perspectives into who I am. That vision closely aligns with the style of Cubist portraits, where a fragmented subject could be seen from multiple different angles and perspectives at once. I was also inspired by some surreal artwork I remember seeing at some point when I was younger. I figured out the layout of colours and shapes and I was finally ready to start on my final piece.
I started with the 50’s diner checkered background. Next came the grey outline surrounding my head, which I painted for convenience sake so that my colours would be more consistent than if they kept going across multi-coloured backgrounds. This grey stayed very prominent and dominating until close to the end of my process. Over time I had outlined all the general shapes of my facial features, and started colouring and detailing most of them in. All the varying basic colours really popped against my background. Yet after all this, the grey background still remained the most prominent part of my piece. Although it eluded even more to the surrealist art I was inspired by, I knew I had to commit and courageously add more of myself. In the next class, I added the purple colour that reminded me of a galaxy, so that’s what I made it into. Next was the contrasting orange on the other side of my face, and I added more spontaneous stylistic neck detailing to complete my portrait.
A lot of my portrait’s most notable features were spontaneous ideas that I loved and eventually gained the courage to follow through on. I was hesitant to act on a lot of them, fearing the potential regret I could have. My piece represents a lot of different layers that make me who I am, with most of them leaving room to grow and be further established and discovered as my journey goes on. In the end, each artistic choice I made reflected different parts of my life journey in some way or another. As is the case with making my portrait, I've had to face and overcome many obstacles and decisions in my life. And in the same way, I've gained courage and resilience in my ability to trust the process and power through until the end. I also hope to take the experience of letting myself adapt, change, and grow by doing what feels best, like changing my portrait from a central cubist design to a theatrical surreal piece with hints of cubism involved. I also hope I can take what I’ve learned about acting on spontaneous ideas, as they made the best features in my art and the best memories in my life.
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