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A few years ago I decided to teach myself to oil paint. Since I was home alone, I decided to start with myself as the subject, and looked at myself in the mirror to try and get the features right. What emerged was not particularly flattering, nor an exact likeness...but then, I was working through some pretty severe panic disorder at the time, and couldn't sleep...had dark circles under my eyes and green streaks in my hair from swimming to try and get tired so that I could sleep...and I wasn't trying to make it pretty. Later I scanned the painting and played with it in a number of ways to make different portraits on paper and fabric.
Here is the original painting, and then a piece that was abstracted from it. If you scroll through my blog, you will see some other work that used the oil self-portrait as a starting point.