This is part of a 9' X 4' triptych each panel of which can be the center, i.e. a 360 degree panorama.
The painter earnestly presents himself to the sunny, waking world unaware of the inner critic checking the tapes for compliance. He frames his creation carefully yet he himself is created both from within and without and the dynamic between these forces is the meaning of his painting (and the act of painting).
Here I’m playing with the picture plane. The viewer is complicit in the illusion of a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface - the viewer knows it's a trick of the eye, yet also is fooled by the illusion. Within the actual painting is a man creating a painting, creating another picture plane within the ‘real’ one, revealing more than he realizes, perhaps. Receding behind that frame is his unconscious, the ego and the Id, the feminine and masculine.
HIs own hands, setting the frame within which he chooses to present himself, break the boundary of that plane. His subconscious parts, changing from cool to warm values, rise out of that plane, too. Yet, advancing above the plane of the ‘real’ painting is another illusion, the hand of another painter creating the illusion of a self portrait. The unconscious and the Ur painter meet in the earnest painter’s imagined reality inviting the viewer to move forward and backward through that space.
- Subject Matter: Self Portrait
- Collections: #Narsisyphus Triptych