Self-Portrait

My Self-Portrait consists of three small collages, currently, they have no title. In order to better understand these collages the viewer must understand my relationship with art within these recent years. Would I call myself an artist today? No, I would not, should someone have asked me this three years ago I would have quickly responded with a yes. I grew up drawing, painting, and experimenting with different mediums. Today I call myself a designer, or better yet a designer in the making, and over the years I realize I have let go of my artistic side. I am still a creative person, but I no longer draw, paint, or have fun with art as I once did. I feel like I have created this barrier that I can no longer tear down due to my own insecurities. Within the self-portrait, I gave myself the privilege of creating something without analyzing or restricting myself. This represents a gateway from the person I used to be to the person I am today.  

With these collages I let myself make art without thinking, I feel like when I matured and especially coming to Rutgers I developed this mentally of everything having a purpose. I have engraved this ideology of only creating something if it has a purpose or strong reasoning behind it. Very much like the modernist or the students of the Bauhaus. When I was younger and in high school, I studied fine arts, my teachers would let me express and create things without having a grand meaning. When I was a freshman in high school I had a teacher who would have us freely draw, he would put on random music and provide us with sharpies and let us draw. He would instruct us to do whatever we felt like, to avoid all thoughts and to simply move our hands.  I took this method to create my own self-portrait. I didn’t purposely put meaning behind every single image or object, yet by simply moving or adding something I subconsciously gave it meaning.

In terms of the actual collages, they all contain images of myself and that within itself is a huge thing. I considered myself a reserved person, who hated having her photo taken and I would have never had the courage to display them. Putting these images within the collages showcase my growth and new found confidence that I have developed due to friends and a better understanding of myself. Each individual piece has small objects or imagery that in some ways or another represent either my childhood or my personality. For example, the horns in my red collage represent me being Taurus, how often we are thought as stubborn which I necessary view as a good thing. Then you have these linear drawings of dogs in motion, firstly I absolutely love dogs and I think they represent my playful and caring side. But do ask me why I placed the rectangles in a certain way, or why I have two rectangles within each piece. As I said, I let myself experiment without thought.

My whole ideology behind my self-portrait is inspired by Hilma af Klint, I really enjoyed how she dedicated most of her work to theosophy and it inspired me to base my work not on religions or myths but on the subconscious. This allowed me to reconnect my artistic side, although it is digital, it’s a nice blend with my current self, graphic design to the artist

I was once. A reading that also aided me into using photography of myself was On Photography, by Susan Sontag where she states  ”To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.” I wanted to showcase the self-love that I have developed and am grateful for the photographer behind these photos.  Overall these collages are meant to aid me to help break down the barrier I have created with fine arts. Although they are graphic they are small steps towards finding a balance within who I am.