'self portraits

self portraits

in colored pencils

done on procelain plates

decorated with roses

by an artist I know not

when I was twenty four

when I was twenty-eight

when I was twenty-nine

or when I was thirty-three or four

such was the first period of my life

to recall also

the second period of my life:

thirty three years spent in Italy

mainly as a student

studying painting

or lately

as a renewed student

studying old Hong Kong films

by sketching them while watching

a habit I came to acquire

when I attended Art History lectures

at the U of A in Canada

These portraits reminded me of those days 

as a student

when we were given the assignment

to draw from photos 

by turning them upside down

so you could get to be more objective

about treating the images as purely images made with tones and lines

and not as the person you know too well

in this case:

self-portraits

I did not draw these self portraits made from photo booths

upside down as years ago

But I am showing them

sideways

so you also see them 

differently

in order to

to pay hommage

of my first dicovery

of the Picasso ladies:

her sideways kind of glance

perhaps when I was fourteen

(works done in 2015 , colored penicils sealed with resina on procelain plates )

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