Selfie: Layers of Self and Disappearance
Medium: Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 4ft x 4ft
Creation Date: 2020
Collection: Hand-painted Photography
Selfie (2020) is part of my Hand-painted Photography Collection, where I explore the intersections of self-representation, erasure, and identity. Created by painting directly over a printed photograph, this 48 x 48 inch mixed media piece invites the viewer into an intimate yet deliberately obscured reflection on visibility.
In Selfie, the act of self-portraiture is not about clarity, but about concealment. Layers of acrylic partially blur, distort, and overwrite the original photographic image, challenging the expectation of the selfie as an act of exposure. The result is a tension between what is revealed and what is hidden, between the surface and what lurks beneath.
This work resonates with the conceptual approach of Marlene Dumas, whose paintings of faces and figures often drift between intimacy and distance, revealing the complexities of seeing and being seen. Like Dumas, I am drawn to the ways images of ourselves can both connect and alienate us from our own identities.
Selfie becomes less a portrait of a person and more a portrait of longing, of disappearance, of the unstable narratives we create when we attempt to capture ourselves.
As part of the Hand-painted Photography Collection, Selfie asks the viewer: What parts of ourselves do we choose to show? And what do we deliberately erase?
