‘Self Portrait in Blue Dress’ 60 x 60cm acrylic on canvas has been selected as a finalist in the 2018 Portia Geach Memorial Award, an art prize for portraiture by women artists of people from Art, Letters or the Sciences.
Self-portraiture is strange, introspective, revealing and exposing, landing somewhere between vanity and self mockery.
The self-examination required in rendering yourself on canvas is confronting, like the act of staring into the mirror back at yourself, peering into your own eyes. I could see other members of my family as I painted and thought about my mother, holding down a static image of her and those still images in my mind, half memory and half photograph.
You look out at the world at other people more intensely and clearly than you ever see yourself or your expressions and emotions as they register over your face. It’s the same as seeing yourself in a photo or moving image: it can be hard to recognize yourself. The same startled reaction as hearing your own voice played back on a recording. In some ways you don’t really know who you are. Your relationship with your physical self is so internalized and fleeting, as each moment passes.
Susan O’Doherty 2018
Exhibition runs: 12 October – 2nd December
at – S.H. ERVIN GALLERY
Observatory Hill, Sydney