It has been a while since I last blogged on this topic. Not because it has fallen by the wayside, but because it has taken on a steady momentum, an inevitability, that I rather like, and in some ways it almost has a life of its own.
Shortly after my last post, I fell into a ruminative phase after reading fully Laura Cumming’s book on self-portraits, A Face To The World. It seemed to me that amongst the 60 or so pieces I had at that stage, I had an example of every motivation and analysis of the art of self-portraiture from narcissism and egotism through to performance and self-knowledge. I think at one point I was so excited by this realisation that I decided I needed to re-read the book, make notes, and start re-analysing all the work I had done to date from these various perspectives. Other work has intervened though, and a more careful academic analysis will have to wait.
One thing which has struck me forcefully is that I am no longer concerned by the merits or worth of each piece viewed individually. It is now the concentrated mass of images I see, and I have surprised myself by the range of the work I have produced without planning. Every drawing every day remains a response to my self-view on THAT day, at THAT moment with whatever mobile device or digital equipment I happen to have to hand. Although I began with mirrors, I realised I had more freedom to do work wherever I might find myself if I took ‘blind’ photos from my phone, or caught myself posing on a webcam. I have experimented freely using some of these photos, and have extended the range and number of apps and drawing and painting software.
My latest development is the establishment of a dedicated blog ‘http://gillianholding.wordpress.com/’ to automate the links of posted images through to Twitter and Facebook and at the same time provde a bit of background to each piece, because I have found viewers are interested in the basis for and stories behind each response. Can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier!
