"The Self in Blue", 2021

This is one of the few self-portraits I have ever done that has portrayed myself in a positive light. Admittedly, I often only feel comfortable painting myself as grotesque or in the midst of some kind of emotional struggle. It is not often that I paint myself as serene and pleasant like I did in this piece. I have struggled often with finding the worth in myself, and I did this as a way to find it. It was difficult; I actually changed course several times during the painting because I struggled with the concept. It felt like the person in the painting was too confident, too content, too self-assured to be me, and it took many nights before I was finally able to paint the finishing touch: the distinctive curly, side-parted hair that definitively makes this subject “me”.