For this week’s Kick-About, we turn inward from the bold, expressive landscapes of Wu Guanzhong, to the theme of self-portraiture. Whether literal or abstract, introspective or outward-facing, self-portraiture allows us to reflect on who we are and the world we inhabit. Enjoy this latest collection of ‘new works made in a short time’, and as always, you can explore all previous editions of The Kick-About here.
Itta Howie
“50 years of teachers saying, “make a self-portrait”. It looks like I enjoyed the first from 1975 (me at German carnival) and the last from 2023 (a series of Chowdhury-style touch drawings in response to KA #90) the most.”
Jan Blake
“The only times in my life I have ever attempted a self portrait in any form seems to have occurred at times of stress and confusion. It really isn’t something I yearn to do. However, I dug around in my past and found these odd drawings and prints I had done since leaving school and art school . Some had been motivated by an event in my life like the death of my father. Some seem to be me reflecting on my situation at that time whether about the end of a love affair or just plain confusion as in my bed after a restless night in Spain. The most recent one was just before COVID really hit us.“
“This monoprint was made after a trip to the Isle of White 1969. It was for the first music festival in this country, with Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and many more over a three day period. It was terrifying and exciting in equal measure but I decided these vast gatherings were not for me!”
“This was not long after my father had died and I was longing to see him enjoying his ritual reading of the newspaper after his lunch in the afternoon. (1971)”
“I joined a printing workshop one evening a week in London. Still grieving the deaths of both my parents. This was my grandmother’s mirror found when the house was emptied. (1976 – Etching)“
“The imprint of my body after a tortuous night defending myself against mosquitoes in a hostel in Spain! (2005?)”
“COVID 2019. I am restless and uneasy.”
Gary Thorne
“The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman) is a good read, revealing how conformist in nature we tend to be. One good fortune with ageing however, is the lack of need to conform, so maybe, my increasing level of personal expression leaning towards bewilderment, goes in-hand with that. This makes me wonder: had I delivered more of ‘cutting out the bullshit and being the real you’, might I be radically different today?“
Kerfe Roig
“My first thought was to just draw a new self portrait every day for a week using different techniques and different media. Then I had the idea to look through the folder I had of old self portraits and try to match old and new.“
“A pencil drawing reminded me of another drawing I did a few
years ago… Some days are like this, as we all know.”
“Blind contour drawing very similar to one done in the early 2000s.”
“Watercolor—I haven’t done any watercolor self portraits in a very long time—so the early one is from 1978 when for some reason I did a lot of them.”
“Was supposed to be a contour drawing which I colored in a bit for one eye when I forgot. This is my favorite of all of them I did, and I paired it with another favorite, after Matisse, done in 2015.”
“Two done in neocoor, the earlier one from 2015.”
“I’ve done a lot of drawings of my hands over the years—left hand drawn with right hand, right hand drawn with left hand. The earlier ones are from the early 2000s.”
“Here’s my Self Portrait #22—a rendering of me, after Jawlensy’s painting of his wife Helene.”
“Cray-pas paired with a painting from 2015. I’ve done very few self portraits in color it seems.”
“Two drawings, the earlier one, which looks very much like my best friend from adolescence, Alice, was drawn in 1972. I really like it, even if I don’t think that’s what I looked like then.”
“I drew myself in my sunglasses, right after I washed my hair. The drawing from the 1970s is more like how I picture myself in those years. I have almost no photos of myself in my 20s, so nothing to compare to.”
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Charly Skilling
“Self-portrait is a daunting prospect, requiring one to be honest and reflective. Draw what you see, not what you think is there. So I’ve tried to do just that. As some of you will know, I have restricted vision so this drawing aims to show exactly what I see. I positioned the mirror some 30-40 cm from me and tried to ensure that I focused in the centre of the mirror each time I looked at it. Normally I would ‘scan’ my reference material so that I create an image from a patchwork of mini-views, but in this case, I focused on just the one. It was an interesting exercise!”
Phil Gomm
“I went to see Robert Egger’s Nosferatu a few weeks ago; I think it must be living in imagination still! In approaching these portraits, I was also thinking of backstage photographs I’ve seen of the likes of Laurence Olivier and Gielguld as King Lear or Prospero. And maybe it’s because I’ve just had a big birthday that I was interested in embracing the old father time vibe… I used silver face paint and this metallic paste on my beard and scalp, as I knew the black and white would eat that up in terms of pushing the texture. In classic Kick-About style, I gave myself 90 minutes to get these images done and dusted; the bathroom sink certainly suffered for my art!”
James Randall
“I have recently completed a couple of intricate pieces so before Phil issued the self-portrait call I was fiddling with a very simple abstract. I used that styling to embark on the self portrait but it wasn’t working and then I took it into photoshop and it was heavy with layers. Any how that made me return to simple shapes and after a particularly hot day this was the result.“
Vanessa Clegg
“Insects and attempting to highlight their falling numbers have played a large part, over the years, in my artwork. The most recent exhibition had a lightbox filling the window with drawings of these crucially important little creatures. So, an insect had to be included, as did the grid, which I often use to go from small to large scale… “gridding up”… I’m averse to having my photo taken, so this kind of ‘cover up’ also seemed right!”
vanessaclegg.co.uk / vanillaclegg
Francesca Maxwell
“I have never painted a self-portrait in the conventional way. I did, for a brief period of time, paint a few figurative portraits of people close to me years ago, but I soon started painting them abstractly. I felt that way allowed me to express more of the person, and my connection with them, than a mere representation of their physical features. So, this is my self-portrait. I have painted it over many years, and it contains many stories about me and my dreams. Dreams I had while asleep since childhood and dreams of becoming. I think a portrait represents a moment in time of the person and the way it is perceived by the artist. I love the “sequence” of artists’ self-portraits over many years, representing time in the linear sense. This one, instead, is a “work in progress” painting of myself, where time does not exist.”
And from the mirror to the ink-blot—but no less a mirror, perhaps?
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