Super Cool Edgy Self Portrait.jpg

 

This is my self portrait. It doesn't take a genius to recognize how low-energy this picture is. I wanted to come to class with something super cool, I wanted to do strange makeup and weird hair and have funky angles. I wanted my portrait to be captivating. My morale (as it tends to do) during the week dwindled and with it, my inspiration to make anything worth looking at in full. I'm using this as my self portrait as a testament to myself that art doesn't need to require insane visible effort. Sometimes there can be art in the struggle itself. In a way, I still kind of did what I wanted to make. I cut a lot of my hair on a whim before taking this, the angle and lighting is certainly unexpected. This might not be the most energetic self portrait, but it's of me and of my space so that makes it mine. I think I made several subconscious creative choices although they weren’t directly intentional, including the setting, the dynamic of the image, and the mood I was hoping it’d instill in the viewers. Although it doesn’t look too organized or thought-through, creating the portrait itself really did spark lots of self-reflection by me. I went from feeling really guilty about not creating the kind of portrait that I had pictured and expected from myself, to feeling a sort of detachment from my effort in the assignment, and then a sort of realization how all of those feelings in themselves are symbolic of what I wanted to get across with my portrait. These kinds of feelings I felt while creating the image could be felt by my peers. As arts conservatory students, we are constantly putting insane amounts of pressure on ourselves to be something great, create something great, to make our mark on our industries. We are, after all, here because we crave that kind of recognition and significance through our art. I think that’s what made me come to terms with and be more content about my portrait, and in turn, my art in itself. Sometimes the beauty of art isn’t the effort, the amount of work put into it, but more the intention and what the art is able to say to people–how it’s able to touch people and stick with them. Still navigating this new change and life is teaching me to have grace with myself when I can't meet the (frequently unattainable) standards I have for myself. Trying to let myself feel the guilt of missing those standards and letting myself know it's okay. I'm still determined to get the portrait that's painted in the back of my head, one that I'm proud to display and have talked about. For now though, I'll work on understanding that in order to get to that, I had to have a few of these.