Self Portrait in Winter Hat

Self Portrait in Winter Hat

Last week I began and completed, Self Portrait in Winter Hat, and I believe it comes very close to what I have been after. (Two days vs. nine months (Coup d’Etat)) There are moments of complete, flat abstraction and moments that tend towards volumetric representation. The paint both references itself as the medium, the physical characteristics of oil paint, and at the same time comes together to reference skin stretched over the forehead or the side plane of the hat as it wraps back towards the sky, away from the viewer. The background has turned into a flat plane of green, turned vertical, and applied thickly like butter with a palette knife. The sky creates the illusion of atmospheric depth in which clouds exist in space. But before this illusion is taken too seriously, any sort of depth is denied by the flat brushstrokes at the horizon and, especially, the red mess that exists above the head. Both of which allude to the physical flatness of mere paint on canvas.

Though I feel this painting by no means captures a viewer’s attention like Coup d’Etat or Girl with Watermelon, if I could maintain this balance of realism and abstraction, illusion and the material, in a more complex, less straightforward composition, I think I could create some pretty interesting paintings.