VSW23 Project 3Session 4, 2011

Paula McLoughlin #13498627

Coversheet

Background for project to date, and current direction for project 3

Following on from previous projects and investigation, I wanted to develop the idea of 'inpretation of self' through the investigation of historical representations of self portraiture, and the exploration of how these representations can extend my understanding of my own self portrait. In my previous project, selected self portraits by the likes of Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Chuck Close were used to base my...

Direction for project contd.

investigations on. I chose these Artists because, either their own self portraits had been re- interpreted by other Artists, or because they themselves had appriated previous Artists' self portraits, into their own work. After selecting these Artists and paintings, I sort to understand the formal choices these artists had employing. To do so, I sketched myself into their compositions. In doing so I came to learn

Direction for project contd.different ways of describing my face. It was a freeing period of expression. Particularly freeing was the removal of precise attempts at realism, which improved my abilities to convey experimentation and self expression. In my previous project - after sketching myself into the compositions I had selected - I painted my version of those paintings onto a mirror so I could examine the idea of relfection and interpretation through self portraiture.

Direction for project contd.Painting onto the mirror and photographing my own reflection through the brushstrokes was also a way inserting my presence even further into the resulting art work and to communicate the idea that the artist themself, can see themselves in new ways, through the process of interpretating their image into new art forms. But before I explored that idea more deeply, I made painted sketches of the photos from my previous project, because I initially had the idea...

Painted sketches based on previous mirror reflection photographs

to expand those photographs into more abstract inpretations of quotiational self portraiture. But after making the sketches I felt that I need to extend the idea of 'interpretation' in a more diect manner, so I returned to my pencil sketches from my previous project, and to the other Artists' art works.

Painted Sketch of the 'Frida' painted reflection

Painted sketch of the 'Egon' painted reflection

Painted sketch for the 'Chuck' painted reflection

Painted sketch for the 'Helen' painted reflection

Painted sketch for the 'Picasso' painted reflection

'Me as them, as me' experimentation

To increase my understanding of the idea that to see myself in new ways I will 'interpret' myself through my idea of the style employed by other artists, to find new ways of seeing myself, I revisted my earlier sketches and painted myself into the composition of the earlier art works. In the first intance I painted myself as Picasso. Unlike my first attempts at appropriate earlier art works where I was adding my face to the composition largely unaltered, this time I ....

Picasso as Picasso

I deliberately tried to intergrate my facia features more fully into the manner of the original painting.

Now me, as Picasso

Egon, as Egon

Me, as Egon

I took more liberties with Egon's style in this attempt, because I was finding that all this experimentation was encouraging to developa looser style of painting.

Hele as Helen

Adopting Helen's style and composition

Me as Helen

Via these experiments,I was so pleased to discover how flexible one face, my face in this case,can be, to the manipulationof the artist's intention.

Double the interpretation and appropriation

After deciding what I looked like, through my interpretation of another Artist's self portrait, I wanted to do the same again but this time, I would take the composition from one Artist, and the style of another. My intention for attempting this, was to find out if this form of double interpretation would show me even more ways to see myself.

Double the interpretation and appropriation contd.

In this first example, I have taken my idea of the framing and positioning of my head, from Chuck Close's self portrait, and the colouring and stylisation from Picasso's self portrait.

'Chuck' in the style of 'Picasso'

Double the interpretation and appropriation contd.

In the next painting I have based the positioning of the head on Picasso's self portrait, and painted it in the style of Egon Schiele's self portraiture. While I was relatively pleased with these experiments, I was aiming more for a musical jazz riffing between the diferent Artists' own stlyes.

'Picasso' in the style of 'Egon'

'Helen' in the style of 'Frida'

Idea behind the final series of paintings

While I appreciated my attempts at mixing the techniques of teh previous artists, I felt the results of those expreiments were too stylised and were not showing me new ways to see and understand my own face, and indentity. So I returned to my previous idea of painting me into another Artist's self portrait. All through project two and now three, I have had good results where Frida's portrait was being explored, so I returned to her painting and

Final Series 'Chuck to Egon, to Frida, to Helen'

appropriated her paiting again. I tried to not only paint my face in her setting, but to mould my own face and her's together. I wanted a hyrid of the two faces, to reflect the idea that, by incorporating her history with mine, my resulting image will be partly mine, and partly hers.

Final Series, painting #1 'Me/Frida'

I am so pleased with thispainting. It doesn't embody the same level of pathos, that Frida'soriginal does, but I reallyemjoyed melding my face to hers, in hercomposition - telling mystory through hers.

Final Series, painting #2, 'From Frida to Helen'

I liked my 'Frida' paintingso much I wanted to repeat the composition inanother style. This time,I adopted and adaptedHelen's circular bottle topsand made a more success-ful version of a doubleappropriational painting.

Final series, painting #3, 'Chuck'

After being so pleased with the progression fromthe first Frida painting, to the second, I wanted toattempt this process againto see if it was repeatable.So, this time I melded myface with Chuck Close's.

Final series, painting #4 'From Chuck to Egon'

In this final painting Imade a small addition tothe process by retaining thestyle of Chuck, but changingthe underlying compositionto that of Egon's self portrait.While perhaps not quite as strong as resulting image asthat of the second Frida,

Final thoughts on the final series paintingsthis painting still pleases me. I particularly like the resulting abstraction of the portrait. And I think all four painting have proven (at least to me) that there are many ways to express my own image and show who I am. Equally so, those ways are only one short step away from an expressive form of abstraction which could potentially be explored and developed into something new. However, the strongest paintings remained within those first layers of appropriation and interpreation. Which is something I imagine the earlier Artists' understood and took into account.