Expression of Self
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Expression of Self (2023) is an introspective canvas — a visual attempt to answer a question that keeps evolving: Who am I when I paint? Part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this 60 x 60 inch mixed media painting captures the moment when expression overrides explanation and gesture becomes identity.
The surface is built from layered tones — dusty pinks, bold blacks, fleeting white, and flashes of raw ochre. Sharp brushstrokes interrupt softer textures, like thoughts forming mid-sentence. You can see indecision. You can see clarity. Most of all, you can see motion — a kind of searching written into the paint itself.
I made Expression of Self without a plan. I entered the studio that day with only a question, and left with a painting that didn’t answer it, but gave it form. The work isn’t a self-portrait. It’s a moment of contact between emotion and action.
This painting finds resonance with the raw honesty of Tracey Emin, especially her ability to make the personal universal through gesture. Like Emin, I believe in the vulnerability of making — that the marks we leave are evidence of our willingness to show up for ourselves.
Expression of Self is not tidy. It doesn’t perform identity. It reveals it — layer by layer, mistake by correction, color by shift. It’s selfhood in motion.
As part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this piece offers a mirror, not of face, but of feeling. A place where internal language finds form.
