VSW23 Final Project

1. VSW23 Project 3
Session 4, 2011
Paula McLoughlin #13498627

2. Coversheet

3. Background for project to date, and
current direction for project 3
Following on from previous projects and
investigation, I wanted to develop the idea of
'inpretation of self' through the investigation of
historical representations of self portraiture, and
the exploration of how these representations
can extend my understanding of my own self
portrait.
In my previous project, selected self portraits by
the likes of Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and
Chuck Close were used to base my...

4. Direction for project contd.
investigations on. I chose these Artists
because, either their own self portraits had
been re- interpreted by other Artists, or
because they themselves had appriated
previous Artists' self portraits, into their own
work.
After selecting these Artists and paintings, I sort
to understand the formal choices these artists
had employing. To do so, I sketched myself into
their compositions. In doing so I came to learn

5. Direction for project contd.
different ways of describing my face. It was a
freeing period of expression. Particularly freeing
was the removal of precise attempts at realism,
which improved my abilities to convey
experimentation and self expression.
In my previous project - after sketching myself
into the compositions I had selected - I painted
my version of those paintings onto a mirror so I
could examine the idea of relfection and
interpretation through self portraiture.

6. Direction for project contd.
Painting onto the mirror and photographing my
own reflection through the brushstrokes was
also a way inserting my presence even further
into the resulting art work and to communicate
the idea that the artist themself, can see
themselves in new ways, through the process of
interpretating their image into new art forms.
But before I explored that idea more deeply, I
made painted sketches of the photos from my
previous project, because I initially had the
idea...

7. Painted sketches based on previous
mirror reflection photographs
to expand those photographs into more
abstract inpretations of quotiational self
portraiture. But after making the sketches I felt
that I need to extend the idea of 'interpretation'
in a more diect manner, so I returned to my
pencil sketches from my previous project, and
to the other Artists' art works.

8. Painted Sketch of the 'Frida' painted
reflection

9. Painted sketch of the 'Egon' painted
reflection

10. Painted sketch for the 'Chuck'
painted reflection

11. Painted sketch for the 'Helen'
painted reflection

12. Painted sketch for the 'Picasso'
painted reflection

13. 'Me as them, as me' experimentation
To increase my understanding of the idea that
to see myself in new ways I will 'interpret'
myself through my idea of the style employed
by other artists, to find new ways of seeing
myself, I revisted my earlier sketches and
painted myself into the composition of the
earlier art works.
In the first intance I painted myself as Picasso.
Unlike my first attempts at appropriate earlier
art works where I was adding my face to the

14. Picasso as Picasso
I deliberately tried to intergrate my facia
features more fully into the manner of the
original painting.

15. Now me, as Picasso

16. Egon, as Egon

17. Me, as Egon
I took more liberties with
Egon's style in this
attempt, because I was
finding that all this
experimentation was
encouraging to develop
a looser style of painting.

18. Hele as Helen

19. Adopting Helen's style and
composition

20. Me as Helen
Via these experiments,
I was so pleased to
discover how flexible one
face, my face in this case,
can be, to the manipulation
of the artist's intention.

21. Double the interpretation and
appropriation
After deciding what I looked like, through my
interpretation of another Artist's self portrait, I
wanted to do the same again but this time, I
would take the composition from one Artist, and
the style of another.
My intention for attempting this, was to find out
if this form of double interpretation would show
me even more ways to see myself.

22. Double the interpretation and
appropriation contd.
In this first example, I have taken my idea of
the framing and positioning of my head, from
Chuck Close's self portrait, and the colouring
and stylisation from Picasso's self portrait.

23. 'Chuck' in the style of 'Picasso'

24. Double the interpretation and
appropriation contd.
In the next painting I have based the
positioning of the head on Picasso's self
portrait, and painted it in the style of Egon
Schiele's self portraiture.
While I was relatively pleased with these
experiments, I was aiming more for a musical
jazz riffing between the diferent Artists' own
stlyes.

25. 'Picasso' in the style of 'Egon'

26. 'Helen' in the style of 'Frida'

27. Idea behind the final series of
paintings
While I appreciated my attempts at mixing the
techniques of teh previous artists, I felt the
results of those expreiments were too stylised
and were not showing me new ways to see and
understand my own face, and indentity.
So I returned to my previous idea of painting
me into another Artist's self portrait. All through
project two and now three, I have had good
results where Frida's portrait was being
explored, so I returned to her painting and

28. Final Series 'Chuck to Egon, to
Frida, to Helen'
appropriated her paiting again. I tried to not
only paint my face in her setting, but to mould
my own face and her's together. I wanted a
hyrid of the two faces, to reflect the idea that,
by incorporating her history with mine, my
resulting image will be partly mine, and partly
hers.

29. Final Series, painting #1 'Me/Frida'
I am so pleased with this
painting. It doesn't
embody the same level
of pathos, that Frida's
original does, but I really
emjoyed melding my
face to hers, in her
composition - telling my
story through hers.

30. Final Series, painting #2, 'From Frida
to Helen'
I liked my 'Frida' painting
so much I wanted to
repeat the composition in
another style. This time,
I adopted and adapted
Helen's circular bottle tops
and made a more success-
ful version of a double
appropriational painting.

31. Final series, painting #3, 'Chuck'
After being so pleased
with the progression from
the first Frida painting, to
the second, I wanted to
attempt this process again
to see if it was repeatable.
So, this time I melded my
face with Chuck Close's.

32. Final series, painting #4 'From
Chuck to Egon'
In this final painting I
made a small addition to
the process by retaining the
style of Chuck, but changing
the underlying composition
to that of Egon's self portrait.
While perhaps not quite as
strong as resulting image as
that of the second Frida,

33. Final thoughts on the final series
paintings
this painting still pleases me. I particularly like
the resulting abstraction of the portrait. And I
think all four painting have proven (at least to
me) that there are many ways to express my
own image and show who I am. Equally so,
those ways are only one short step away from
an expressive form of abstraction which could
potentially be explored and developed into
something new. However, the strongest
paintings remained within those first layers of
appropriation and interpreation. Which is
something I imagine the earlier Artists'