Self Portaits 2005 - 2006

Having just seen a short film about Michael Landy and his portrait drawings I was encouraged to put up on this blog several of the images I made between 2005 and 2006. The paintings in the composite image above were all made using a series of self-portrait photographs taken by the subjects themselves The images are either oil on canvas or waterclour). I then took these images and made portraits out of them. I was very interested in the difference between portraits made of people looking at me as an artist as against making images out of other people's self-portraits. When the subjects were taking the photographs of themselves they look very differently into the blank eye of the camera as against looking at the artist. I felt when working on the photographs that they had taken of themselves that it was as if they were looking into the abyss.