I think all art is a self-portrait. Regardless of whether it is intended to be a self-portrait.

I sometimes feel selfish when I make art purposely about myself. It feels selfish, almost narcissistic, to paint who I am, a direct self-portrait. To make art for myself, about myself. To make art that is about my emotions, my struggles, my thoughts.

When I look at art in a museum or gallery, I like to think about what it would have been like to be the artist. What were they thinking about during the creation process? How did they feel? How did their state of mind affect their work? Did making the art elicit happiness? positivity? or negativity? anger? frustration? Did they like their art?

The artist made every little brushstroke, every subtle shift in the surface, every line, carving, mark. A collection of ideas, thoughts, emotions. Is it possible to separate the artist from their work?

Jeff Koons/artists who have assistants helping with the painting – can their art be considered a self-portrait? Is the artist the idea or the creation? Does it even matter?

When I first started coming up with ideas for this piece, I struggled a lot. I hated everything I drew out and none of my scale models were appealing to me at all. I had been thinking about the project and brainstorming ideas for a week; I had talked over my ideas with many people, yet nothing inspired me to create.

After being given an extension, I decided I wouldn’t think about the project anymore, yet on Tuesday, I decided I wanted to start working. I had a small doodle-like sketch of a possible idea and no scale models, but I started cutting metal and decided I would stop thinking and just see what happens when I make something without a carefully thought out plan.

Before I started working, I wrote down the words “precarious, uncertain, spontaneous, and wobbly” and in a way, these words guided how I worked. I spent most of Tuesday working on my metal sculpture, welding on pieces to see how it would affect the structure, hoping that the requirements of horizontal and vertical would somehow fall in place (which they did). While working on the project, I was free to explore – I held each piece of metal in my hands and experimented with how different pieces looked connected to each other. It became a piece more about process and a way to stop thinking.

Sometimes I overthink things way too much and become lost in my head with too many ideas to just pick one – I am sometimes too hesitant to start until I have meticulously planned out every detail. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to do, yet sometimes I think too much about different ideas and become lost with too many thoughts. This piece is about letting go, losing control, and being spontaneous. Because sometimes I need to stop thinking in order to think.

I think process-based art relates to mindfulness because with process-based art, you only focus on the present and make marks and see where the marks take you. Accepting all feelings and thoughts and emotions and surroundings and acknowledging them and placing them on a canvas.

I had a professor in college who encouraged me to make more process-based art because at the time, I was really tight and realism/detail oriented, and letting go and trusting the process was really freeing and fun, and pushed my art to new places. It was especially freeing to break the rules of art and add thick globs of oil paint, drip paint, scrape paint, turn the canvas around and switch the orientation of the artwork as I worked. And mixing gunk (dried paint, beads, yarn, string, fabric) into the paint. It’s really liberating to take a material as expensive and “high” art as oil paint and fuck it up. Especially because oil paint is primarily associated with the old masters and western, European art. I love taking a “precious” material and destroying it.

About a year ago now, I saw these beautiful quilts at the BMA. I don’t know why, but I much prefer crooked quilts to neat, perfect quilts. I appreciate the skill and patience that goes into perfectly straight quilts, but visually, I much prefer scrappy, imperfect ones. Maybe it relates to my preference for abstract, expressionistic art as opposed to realistic, “perfect”, “skilled” art. There’s so much more movement and gesture to the slanted lines and curved edges. It feels nostalgic and comforting.