Artist Statement

For more than three decades, portraiture has been my way of thinking about identity and human connection. Much of my practice involves painting others, often in single sittings with strangers across different places and contexts. Alongside this outward gaze, I have consistently returned to self-portraiture as a parallel and necessary inquiry.

Self-portraiture functions differently in my work. While commissioned portraits and community projects require sustained attention to others, self-portraits allow me to turn that same attention inward. They are spaces for technical experimentation, psychological inquiry, and unguarded self-assessment. Some record the visible passage of time and aging. Others place my image within larger compositional structures, sometimes hidden inside public works as a quiet mark of authorship and presence.

These self-portraits range from intimate watercolors to larger oil paintings, each marking a moment of personal or artistic reckoning. They are less concerned with display than with using my own face and body as material for thinking through questions that run throughout my practice. How is identity constructed. What does sustained looking reveal. How does being seen, or choosing to be seen, shape who we become.

In my public commissions, I often include myself as a concealed self-portrait, acknowledging my role not only as observer but as participant in the histories I document. Self-portraiture is inseparable from my broader commitment to portraiture as a practice of attention. It is a way of asking who is made visible, how that visibility is shaped, and on whose terms it unfolds.

If you want it slightly cooler, more academic, or conversely more intimate and poetic, we can tune the temperature. This version sits right in that composed, confident middle ground.