Portrait of the Artist

       Three sources of inspiration influenced my original conception of this painting. The first was a sculptural artwork created by David Poppie using vertically split colored pencils. I saw this piece at an art gallery in San Francisco in the summer of 2010 and found it mesmerizing. By placing the pencils of different lengths and different colors right next to each other, he was able to create interesting patterns, dashes of colors, and geometric shapes, which caught my attention. The second source of inspiration was a silhouette, which Lucy Briggs incorporated into her mapping piece last year. I found the clean lines and absence of detail in the silhouette of the girl with a ponytail intriguing, and it stimulated my imagination. The third source of inspiration was the fabric of a dress I bought at Anthropology a few years ago. The off-white cotton fabric punctuated by dashed lines of different colors created a sense of motion and flare.

         Since I had previously approached several self-portrait projects from a realistic perspective, I decided to take a more abstract tack with this project. The three sources of inspiration had been in my idea box for a while, and as I thought about this self-portrait project, those ideas coalesced in an interesting way. Within the first two class periods that we started working on these pieces, I had a very clear idea about the final product I was aiming to create. This is somewhat unusual for me.

         Given my love of color in art and in all aspects of my life, color would be a central component of my piece. Please excuse the cheesy metaphor, but if my life were a tapestry, I would use thousands of different colored threads to weave my story. Furthermore, the thought of using multi-colored dashes to represent the diverse parts of me was appealing. Each person is made up of an infinite number of unique thoughts, ideas, and qualities, and the vastness of this wonderful diversity is intriguing.

         Another of my initial intentions was to experiment with the reversal of positive and negative space. In considering what sort of interplay I wanted between the silhouette and the dashes of color, I decided to place the dashes around and behind the silhouette as opposed to inside the silhouette. As a highly observant person, I am constantly stimulated by the world around me; in this sense the dashes represent stimuli.

         While most self-portraits portray a figure as the main focal point of the piece, I wanted to create a more playful piece that is open to different interpretations by different viewers. I intentionally left open the question as to whether the main subject is the silhouette or the patterns of colorful dashes. My hope was that by only revealing an outline of my profile and by leaving the outline blank inside, the viewer would not automatically make the silhouette the subject. Instead I wanted the viewer to be left with some uncertainty about what is the subject. Furthermore I am intrigued by what initially stands out to the viewer, the dashes or the silhouette and what that says about the viewer.

         One of the keys to the successful making of this piece was sticking to a daily routine where I painted at least one color of dashes every day. The structure of this process propelled me to complete the piece sooner than I might have otherwise. Also, having a very clear idea about the final product I was aiming for grounded my initial intentions and guided my process.