Symbolic Self Portrait

LakeLyn Bagge
Professor Rehm
Advanced Drawing
12 March 2018

Symbolic Self Portrait 

Artist Statement:          

          I took Painting and Mark making last year and we discussed a lot about self identity and self expression. Recently, I have endured a lot of change in my life which has been a really huge mental struggle for me over the past year and a half. I have been diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. This has truly taken over my life this last year. I have discovered that drawing or painting about my mental health and issues that are occurring helps me heal and understand what is happening in ways that are very hard to describe. Last year, I painted a series of three paintings that expressed the pain I was feeling on the inside in the expression of skin alteration (bruises, rashes, freckles, skin diseases). I wanted to still maintain this type of thinking to this self portrait assignment.
           I think of myself as not being very good with the aspect of drawing, but when it comes to painting, that it my forte. The main reason for taking this Advanced Drawing course was to really focus in and pay attention to my techniques for how I draw. I thoroughly enjoy doing figure drawing and spend a lot of my free time doing figure drawings in my sketchbook. When it comes to the aspect of drawing the face, I struggle a lot with drawing features in this range. I am a graphic design minor and I wanted to have a graphic design approach to this self portrait drawing. Chuck Close is a major inspiration to this piece. He often looks at the shapes and colors of the face that he is painting. All the colors and shapes morphs together and create the whole face making the painting look magnificent.
         I have done two 18"x 24" portraits. They both have the same approach of using the posterize method that is a very common effect to make something look graphic. I decided to do the same portrait twice because when I was going through everything that I did this last year, I kept on this same front of being happy and collected within my life. The colors represent the shifts from what I was to what I am now. The first one I did in black ink wash. I used this method to show the feelings and emotions that I endured during my first time period as an adult. I was in a very dark place and saw the world in black and white but still maintained my composure and the front of being "okay" to the rest of the world. I used very sharp lines and shapes as well as dark sections to convey that sense of hostility in my life. The second portrait I decided to do in soft pastels. I used warm colors to ensure the viewers saw the change into a more light and airy portrait that did not have such a dark feeling. I used very straggly and soft marks on this drawing to convey the feeling of angelic, happiness, and beauty.

Research:




http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/portraits/chuck_close.html

   

https://www.warhol.org/andy-warhols-life/

I also thought this article was interesting because it explains the starting evolution of some of the posterization within our world.

https://www.history.com/topics/che-guevara