In the interests of pursuing more representational art I've produced the above self portrait.... though it's not at all a conventional self portrait - which is a good thing, the idea of being creative for me is to be make unconventional creative, and honest.
Why I'm interested in making my work representational is due to my work for many years being conventionally abstract - in pursuit of defining voids, blank spaces, pressed down eyelids of pushed light receptors... staring into the sun for far too long... so the above is an attempt of making a conventional self portrait into an honest and unconventional self portrait - which is still very abstract. In fact so abstract that I felt it required a speech bubble containing a diagram of what each part of the picture represents.
So here's a small close up of the diagram. It explains that the central figure is "me" - the left of me is the "outside" world which channels it's way through me "in"wards and builds all sorts of swirling thoughts and patterns - represented with drawings, teeth, organic forms - moving outwards through internal processes where they form an uncontrolled twist of nonsense. The bottom right corner is a fluttering, pumping, often troubled heart - and finally the red speech bubble containing diagrammatic dialogue is "speech"... As if my speech and expression are of a constant evaluation of all of the "outside", "in", "heart" and "me"... So it's almost like a simplified circuit board of my unwilling day to day construct and conduct... A self absorbed though trapped circuit board integrated into the constant motion of life itself. Possibly not as deep as I may be wanting it to sound.
So in making steps towards being more representational I've produced something mostly self representational - I think that I'm moving more towards telling narratives and showing mental connections of places, people or objects that don't go together melding into some terrifying flux of associations. I've got a few exciting projects coming up over the next year, some of which I may actually get paid for but for now I don't want to go into too much detail about until everything is finalised - in the meantime I'll be keeping this blog up to date with everything I get done.... I've been thinking an awful lot about the routine of keeping an art blog and how not posting anything on here tends to make me work towards very strict and limiting deadlines... one can get caught up in the whole pursuit of self promotion to the point where that is your primary pursuit... this is being rectified.... though as usual, there's a good chance I could be worrying myself over nothing and I should just keep going on the way I always do. Anyway I've some exciting developments coming along which I'll be sure to post on here as soon as confirmation is confirmed.
Below is the image that gave me the idea to make a new self portrait - that being my old self portrait from 2006 - drawn in biro and then blown up to a massive size which I then blutacked on my old bedroom wall.
I lik the caved in horror and the broken contortions of malaise and confusion. This was drawn in a much less settled or successful period of my life, and even though the frustration and the challenges I had then are still present - in a more evolved and charming form - it's nice to contrast and compare different periods of your life with one another and realise that things very gradually do get better and better... until you die of course, although, I've not had many reports on the afterlife it may perhaps be the best time of all.
So I feel quite lucky that things didn't carry on the way they were - if I go even further back I can remember what I felt like at school. Was it all actually worth going through that just to be doing what I'm doing now. I'll think positive and potentially deluded. Perhaps my next self portrait in 5 years will depict some kind of pompously glowing orb of total self satisfaction floating high and free over all the little people I've decided to forgive. Ha ha.
