Artist Statement
Whenever I think of self-portraits, my mind automatically goes to Vincent Van Gogh. His self-portraits are unique in that he paints himself with the same expression, but each is different in that the clothes he wears change. Sometimes he wears a suit, and other times he wears overall and a hat. The overall theme of his self-portraits stay the same, but the atmosphere and surroundings in them change every time. That is the way I approach my self-portraits. I want the overall theme to be expressive of my personality every time, but I never want to make the same thing twice, as I want the visuals to change every time.
In the case of this self-portrait, I decided to approach it in a completely abstract way. In every self-portrait I have made in my life, my face has been the center of attention, unity and mystery for every one. I want to continue to evolve when making expressive pieces, so thematically I wanted to the mysterious aspect to remain, while having my face be the least important visual in the portrait. When also given the challenge of being completely black and white, the task of creating something that does not solely rely on my face because even harder because I’m usually comfortable with making very colorful pieces where there’s more than one thing to observe. All these challenges were ones that I had to face head on, and after changing my self-portait several times in the process, I feel like I succeeded in making something new, yet expressive of my identity.
Instead of making my face the center of attention in my the self-portait, I made the absence of my face the center of attention. The black void that is my face in the portrait really expresses they way I feel when people assume they know who I am. I think assumption is one of the worst things a person can do you, and I feel I captured that feeling with the absence of my face. But what I think is the thing that grabs the viewers attention is not simply the grainy atmosphere of the self-portrait but the words that are in the front of the piece. I debated whether or not I should put words in my self-portait, but I feel I made the right choice, as it really captures the way I feel in terms of individuality. I would much rather end up alone than end up in a place that I do not recognize of identify with, with people that I do not like.
In terms of the technical aspect of my self-portrait, I really had fun making this self-portrait. I spent any spare time I had other than class working on it, discovering new ways to accomplish things that I wanted to add. My favorite discovery was towards the end of the process and it was the Burn tool. The Burn tool is useful for making the contrast really strike in whatever area you place it. My most useful discovery was the Layer Mask. I found it really frustrating working with layers before because deleting or erasing areas would always provide issue after issue for me. But with the Layer Mask tool, I can cohesively merge things together with a much more unified approach.
In conclusion, I feel like I learned a lot in the self-portait project. I will definitely be putting this in my portfolio for college. The experience was very rewarding, and in the end I was very happy with the final product
Jason Gonzalez 