a canvas and a handful of brushes

Egon Schiele, self-portrait, 1912

A few weeks ago, I bought a large canvas oil painting at Gee-Dub (my local Goodwill Store).  I actually bought it for the canvas, since the painting was one of those icky mass-produced jobs.  This started a chain reaction of inspiration.  Next, I bravely marched into Dick Blick and picked up seven large tubes of oil paint and a handful of brushes, since my leftover college brushes are far worse for the wear after 25 years of homework projects and household odd jobs.  I'm excited and more than a little frightened.  Will it all come back?  Well, I'm certainly going to give it my best shot.

The idea of a self-portrait is rolling around in my head.  In museums and galleries, self-portraits always reach out and grab me.  There is something both enigmatic and magical about how an artist portrays him/herself. All works of art, but particularly self-portraits, contain an element of autobiography.  They reveal something of their maker's personality and vision, their way of seeing and thinking. Oscar Wilde, on the subject of the portrait in The Picture of Dorian Gray wrote:

"...every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.  The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion.  It is not he who is revealed by the painter, it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself."

How true when the painter and sitter are one in the same.  Still in the idea stage here, so stay tuned for updates. Don't let me chicken out.