Self-Portraits (2020-Present)

Self-portraits are the means by which I meet my urgency to get something down, or better, to get something out. I’m the always available in-house device or armature for test-driving my sense of touch, formal agility, and attitude de jour. Early portraits were attached to concerns for exterior physical likeness. Recent ones are inside jobs. They tend to be 5-minute reckonings – the first thing-in-the-morning encounters after letting out the dogs and feeding the chickens before coffee. On good days my face comes off as I negotiate scrap paper, charcoal, photocopies, or what have you while watching for emergent signs of life. Likeness is the least of it when going for the bone. On great days the work takes off, launched from within, shedding surface me and irksome surface habits.