So I accidentally took two weeks off. First I was tired from Paul’s birthday weekend adventures in NYC. Then I was busy. Then I was not motivated to write anything. Then I was sick. Whew.
Since I’ve been “away”, I started a new piece. A self portrait, which has me all “a way” about it. I love sculpting figures, despite rarely getting a chance to do so anymore. Portraits are not my thing though. Usually it ends up looking like a second cousin of the person I’m sculpting. I am not generally interested in sculpture for the sake of translating direct observation only, so I get bored, impatient, annoyed, etc.
I personally tend to work more intuitively and would rather get the “feel” of the person (it sounds bit woo woo when I put it like that but bear with me). In my animal work I’m most often going for “emotional portraiture” which often captures more clearly what I’m after. However what happens when we turn the lens on ourselves? Can I get observation and emotion? Ahhh it’s a bit of a winding path here. I started off enjoying the process, but very quickly I’m up against a wall of what I think I look like and what’s true (measured literally by calipers or more loosely by the looks on the faces of my loved ones). I see myself as this wide jawed stoic figure with better eyebrows and hair than I know I have. I have a hard time finding softness and beauty in myself, which is interesting to observe. So it’s become this inner battle, made real, between my actual self and my perceived self and I am fighting on all fronts. It’s truly wild when thinking about it like that. I just posted a quick video of the piece and immediately afterward cut back into the nose and structure of the face. We’ll see how far we get but that’s when I’m at for now.
