Michelle Andreano, Self Critique

My self-portrait is composed of three parts – two acrylic painted canvases and a multimedia piece. I started this project out as a pen and ink drawing, however I abandoned that as it was not working for me and went onto the multimedia piece.

I had planned on incorporating some ceramic pieces into my work this semester. The glazed ceramic face was created off of a plaster mold of my face and glazed last semester. I found a plain cigar box which I painted and added paper and fabric to. The last thing I added was the mirror, which I then put pen drawings, like the one I abandoned, around it.

Midway through working on the multimedia piece, I decided to do a traditional painted portrait. After taking a bunch of pictures of myself, I chose one half in darkness. As for the last piece, the abstract self portrait, I created that over the winter break, almost as a continuation of our family portrait piece last semester.

The subject of all of the pieces was hiding myself. The abstract one showed unbridled, raw emotion, the dark self-portrait showed hiding who you are and your emotions from the world, and the multimedia piece showed masking it with a false face. I arranged it so that your eye would go from the intense raw emotion, to the hidden face, which is then looking down at the mask.

The piece means that I hide my true self from most everyone, whether to avoid showing them the truth because it would upset them or me, or because then I would have to actually confront someone.