I’m working on a commission, presently. A long-time friend who appreciates my work recently commissioned me to do a self-portrait. An interesting commission, and I undertook it enthusiastically, without giving the matter any hesitation at all – now I’m mired in it. lol Self-reflection is deep on a thing like this, but it’s not as if it is the first time I’ve done a self-portrait. They’ve changed over the years.
In the 80’s and early 90’s, when I was still “finding my artistic voice” (still a work in progress, as it turns out), and painting in both watercolor and acrylic, I found emotional safety in abstraction for self-portraiture.
I didn’t “stay in that place” indefinitely, things sometimes felt better, sometimes they felt worse. It was a complicated journey, artistically, and I often found that painting was a way of saying what I did not have words for at that time in my life.
Some of it I still lack words for, and I’m happy to be in a very different place in life now. My feelings about these works, and the experiences they represent, remain very complicated.
When my first marriage ended, in 1995, I fought hard and went through much to keep a small painting that remains one of my very fondest pieces, and it hangs in my home even now. I’ve never managed to take a decent photograph of it, and I guess I’m okay with that.
By 2000 I was painting exclusively in acrylic, and doing a lot of 3D mixed-media work, abstractions and pieces that used a lot of glow, glitter, ceramic adornments, and often working quite large. There were certainly pieces I could call self-portraits in the years between 1995 and 2014, when this next piece was painted, but they weren’t necessarily intended that way. (I think art as a form of self-expression of necessity says something about the artist, one way or another.)
The last self-portrait I started on is still “work in progress”, and I don’t know that I’ll ever finish it. I’ve moved on from that moment. I don’t feel the way I did then, and I’m not sure I can finish it in an honest way because I have changed.
So, here I am, now. This person, this woman, this artist, reflecting on self, and preparing to do one sort of self-portrait I’ve never done before; a work on commission for someone else. It’s an interesting project, and it is prompting me to reflect on details of the answer to a question in life that is simultaneously quite deep, and also quite mundane. Possibly one of the least useful questions one can ask oneself; because we already know the answer, however reluctantly we choose to acknowledge it. Self-reflection has value – but does it have hue? I chuckle to myself as I consider how best to portray the woman I see in the mirror every day.
The Art of M. Elisabeth Howell 