Self Portraits

My friend Mary Ann is hanging a show of self-portraits at the Middleton Publis Library today. I'm contributing these paintings. They're all fairly recent. I painted the realistic one a little over a year ago, the feet just a year ago and the goofy twisted one this spring. If I had painted them today I might have handled the backgrounds a little differently, but I don't believe in going back and revising old work. Self-portraits are strange. They involved the challenge of making the image look like you, but also of getting to something of personality. Plus they're hard to hang. I'm a bit disturbed by looking at me looking at me. Anyway, I hope that the two pictures show both my serious and my more playful selves. As for the feet, who knows? I tried to show how water curved at my ankles, and to also indicate reflection and transparency. But the most successful part of the whole thing is the denim jeans. Sometimes you just don't know how a thing is going to turn out.