Self Portrait

Abstract

"As a culture, we tend to share common realizations of death, love, abandonment, comfort, and rejection. Our first encounters with these facets of life are exhilarating, traumatic, and always memorable. Each new experience creates a window in the blank wall of our perception that we were once so accustomed to, framing an entirely new perspective on the world. We hold onto these moments in our minds as brilliant flashes of image and emotion. What is left behind molds and influences our personalities and life choices without us even realizing. In this body of work, I chose to focus on the significant moments I believe have formed who I am and how I see the world. Each scene is made up of at least one hand representing my own and portrays how I have experienced these formative events in my own life. I chose to focus on my first method of self reassurance; two of my most difficult childhood struggles: reading and self discipline; my first realizations of love and death; and the helping and hindering effects of parental scaffolding. Together these scenes form a disjointed self portrait of the moments, influences, and interactions, which have made me who I am."