The Unfinished Self

I am often asked to provide a photo of me. A head shot like the one you can see of me at the New Blood Art website. Ideally I would have one of me in the studio, brush in hand, canvas at the ready, the flair of creative genius zinging wildly in my unkempt hair.

But the reality is that my studio is less than the cover of Dwell magazine and more like the aftermath of an armed robbery. Also, I have no self portrait paintings. I did a few years back but they have all since been whisked away by my mother for ‘safe keeping’.

Also, I want my self portrait to be done while I am pregnant. My current body shape may be a transitory state; I look like I swallowed a watermelon; but it is a fitting one for this project. Like the artist in the studio is somehow holding within them the works of art; pregnant with possibilities.


When I started painting portraits I don’t want to paint big pink heads; I looked for what I loved about other people’s portraits.

Clair Alexander is a London based portrait painter who I really love,
She uses blues and purples, colors that infuse the vitality and life into the sitter.

Amy Shuckbrugh is a painter friend of mine also in London. She is eloquent and delicate. I wish I could be half as ladylike as her. The funny thing is in one of my self portrait attempts (The Muse), I painted her. Each time looking into my own round and pink face and scribbling away her willowy eyes and petite nose.


Anna Judd is a painter I met while shooting a reality show about artists.
It wasn’t this one
She seemed uncertain when I met her; like she was a little scared of the world. Her paintings have stayed with me, wriggling into my thoughts. Her tender tragedy and plastic handling make me want to wipe away the tears.

For a while I was painting a lot of portraits. It is good bread and butter work and I enjoy capturing other people. The light around them, their confidence or lethargy, that moment in their character that invites you in through their eyes.

But when it comes to painting me, I can’t help but paint a piggy squiggle. I assure you that I do not have quite such a wide porcine snout, my complexion is not so ruddy and I don’t always look dumbfounded.

I am working with another handicap; I am using acrylic not oil. I love the vibrant colors and lackadaisical dry time of oil, the way it slips gently onto the canvas. It dries clear and the colors are true. Acrylic is chalky, clumsy, fast and uneven to dry. It is like making love with oven mitts on. But it is not toxic.


I started of with a large mirror propped up in the studio on a spare easel. Charcoal and pencil are great materials for initial sketches. It is plastic, moveable, and accurate. It is easy to mark down the specifics of shapes, light plateaus, and reflecting shadows.

But like saying a word over and over again until the sounds no longer have any meaning; looking at myself in the mirror led me to paint first who I wanted to be, and then who I saw myself as; but never just what I look like.

I love the art of the psyche. I encourage my own ramblings and scribbles when the night is too long and sleep lifts the curtain. I love walking into a kind of waking dream and painting or writing what I can see there. Reality is there for all to see, but imaginative interpretation is something that only a mind can create.

But for this project, I wanted to show people what I really look like. My second attempt I used photographs; a way to remove my mind from the process and concentrate on the logistics of the shapes in my face.

This time I was left with paintings that looked like me, but lacked ‘come hither’ eyes or slightly knowing lips. The project was supposed to take just a few days, but has began to bleed into subsequent days. And even as I write this and put this project to bed, I am still not convinced with the outcome.

Perhaps that is okay. After all, as people, we are never finished. Even when we are dead, there were things that we planned to do and never got round to it, places we meant to visit, things that we meant to say. Perhaps we can never truly represent ourselves in the same way that we can never see the back of our head or get our own first impression. Perhaps portraits should never be finished.



Other commissioned portraits
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