Symbolic Self

Self-Portrait Blog Post

I’ve never liked self portraits. No matter what class I’m in, I’m asked to draw myself in some way, and I never find it enjoyable. I can render faces well, they just never look like the people who I drew, so you can imagine what a poor job I did with myself, especially when staring at yourself in the mirror or in a picture for a prolonged period of time isn’t natural. When it comes to creativity, it’s a lot easier for me to cast it onto figures other than myself.

I decided as a self portrait that I would depict my hands burning a photo of myself as a child. When I was younger, I loved my childhood because I had nothing to worry about, but as I got older, I started to grow more bitter about the way that I grew up. I lived in a single parent household, I was constantly being bullied by my older brother, and I felt that no one understood me. As an adult, I’ve gotten over those feelings very easily, but as a teenager, especially in middle school, I just wanted to erase my childhood. I chose to depict both forms of my past self in graphite because they’re very solid parts in my life. The toddler in the photo lived her life very happily, and the teenager with the lighter in her hand felt very real and devastating emotions, which was a very difficult stage of my life to move past. The fire was drawn in colored pencil because it’s the only theoretical part of the drawing, even though fire is a very physical and damaging element.

When looking for inspiration, I found Robert Pruitt’s work very interesting. He was a very controlled aspect of shading and negative space. His use of color as well is very restrained and adds to his pieces rather than taking away from the whole image.