Self Portrait This self portrait is a series of drawings that were created while riding the city’s public transit system. I was intrigued by the social climate of a train car, a containment cell of the less-elite, where spatial boundaries are not determined by personal comfort, but rather collective need, yet ‘anonymousness’ is worn as a protective skin. I set out to capture on paper the strangers that surrounded me, not so much their physical appearance but rather the unseen shape, judgment, and colour of my imagination when sparked by the little I could perceive of them. Each portrait was completed in the time it took to travel from one train stop to the next. Created in a limited amount of time, with limited knowledge of my subjects, the drawings are inherently of an instinctive and an intuitive quality. Therefore, each portrait acts as a two-way mirror, depicting both sitter and artist. With every page of the series, a new facet of my thought-process is exposed, and my own ‘anonymousness’ is peeled away. In this self-portrait, I express myself both as an individual, an observer of the crowd, and as a member of that same crowd.
Self Portrait
ReplyDeleteThis self portrait is a series of drawings that were created while riding the city’s public transit system. I was intrigued by the social climate of a train car, a containment cell of the less-elite, where spatial boundaries are not determined by personal comfort, but rather collective need, yet ‘anonymousness’ is worn as a protective skin. I set out to capture on paper the strangers that surrounded me, not so much their physical appearance but rather the unseen shape, judgment, and colour of my imagination when sparked by the little I could perceive of them. Each portrait was completed in the time it took to travel from one train stop to the next.
Created in a limited amount of time, with limited knowledge of my subjects, the drawings are inherently of an instinctive and an intuitive quality. Therefore, each portrait acts as a two-way mirror, depicting both sitter and artist. With every page of the series, a new facet of my thought-process is exposed, and my own ‘anonymousness’ is peeled away. In this self-portrait, I express myself both as an individual, an observer of the crowd, and as a member of that same crowd.
Alexa Tamar