Self-portraits

I am currently reading a fascinating book by Frances Borzello titled Seeing Ourselves women's self-portraits. I am only up to the 17th century section but have been utterly inspired already. From women in the 12th century who copied, wrote and illustrated manuscrips and put their own portrait into letters of the alphabet, to Sofonisba Anguissola in the 16th century who depicted herself in self portraits with amazing skill and wit from the age of 12 or so to old age, to Clara Peeters who in the 17th century put distorted reflections of herself at work in the shiny surface of the bowls and jugs in her still-lifes. I was inspired by this and painted a still-life the other day with the aim of putting my reflection in the surface, but got so absorbed, completely forgot to try. Next time! I also really like the self-portrait by Judith Lyester left. Apparently it may have an intellectual programme i.e. the artist is allying herself with the intellectual ideas of her age about the equality of painting to poetry. The author states that Artists claimed that if poetry is a speaking image then painting should be equally respected as mute poetry. The more I get into art, the more I am thinking this may be true. The books also has Self-portrait as 'La Pittura' by Artemisa Gentileschi, the original which I got to see at The Queen's Gallery The Art of Italy The Baroque last week so that was very cool.

Mono prints

Back to class this week. Had a great time with mono prints - rolling ink onto aluminium plates, and tracing onto paper with pastels, pencils and charcoal and then pulling off the paper to see what lay underneath. Sometimes disappointment due to too much ink or not enough, othertimes pleasant surprise at what was revealed. I found myself at one time, for the first time perhaps, lost in the enjoyment of tracing the face of the model and not worrying about the end outcome. This print was done using pastels to trace and I had some comments that it looked like Spring, which was cool.