Artists are explorers. We feed off of new ideas, perspectives, landscapes, circumstances, and relationships. We create visions and bring dreams to life - it is in our nature. We also document, highlight, and reveal what is hidden. The self-portrait can be a rare challenge. How does an artist document their own complicated human existence in one work of art, simultaneously recording an outward appearance and revealing their inner reality? The answer can only be found by creating one. Or perhaps, many. There is a saying: a good writer does not write what they think, they write to know what they think. This applies to any medium. We may sometimes have preformed designs, but these are starting points. When we make a self-portrait, we start out with one concept of ourselves, and through the process, product, and further reflection, we end up somewhere new.
Self-portraits & self-isolation
“Corona” has more than one meaning.
Anatomically, it means “A part of the body resembling a crown”. This is where the novel coronavirus gets its name: from its structure.
“Corona” can also can refer to:
The rarefied gaseous envelope of the sun and stars
Think of a self-portrait as capturing the “aura” enveloping the body; A photo of the sun is also a photo of the corona that distorts and clings to its surface, whether it is apparent or not.
The glow around a conductor at high potential
Creating an artwork requires an infusion of energy, and that energy has the potential to warm anyone who comes in contact with it; a charged object brimming with influential capacity.
The cup shaped center of the narcissus flower
Narcissus: the man so obsessed with his own outer beauty that he was cursed by the gods, drowned for love of his own reflection, and was transformed into a flower with an empty heart. Consider the lesson, and think beyond the surface.