| My more recent paintings are all self-portraits, and I never initially intended to paint only myself and have them be recognized as that. I’ve avoided self-portraits because I’d viewed the practice as an attempt to provide too selective a picture of the artist’s soul rendered with varying degrees of what becomes a forced internal expression. I removed my glasses and used photographs to not see me. It’s been a means to be less recognizable to myself and avoid the more direct experience of an artist looking into the mirror. I used myself as model out of convenience. I could make the faces I wanted and be ready anytime. I also had reservations about having other people, “sitters,” in my place because of a hesitancy to possibly mutilate someone else’s… |  |
Sam Salisbury
My more recent paintings are all self-portraits, and I never initially intended to paint only myself and have them be recognized as that. I’ve avoided self-portraits because I’d viewed the practice as an attempt to provide too selective a picture of the artist’s soul rendered with varying degrees of what becomes a forced internal expression. I removed my glasses and used photographs to not see me. It’s been a means to be less recognizable to myself and avoid the more direct experience of an artist looking into the mirror. I used myself as model out of convenience. I could make the faces I wanted and be ready anytime. I also had reservations about having other people, “sitters,” in my place because of a hesitancy to possibly mutilate someone else’s image through some of the devices and distortions I use in my work.
I’ve been interested in seeing people’s faces painted in what I think looks like partial people experiencing multiple points of time and space. To me it’s an effect like double exposure photography or film frames ghosting over each other, and on other occasions these portions fusing together seem to form a whole mutant object. These overlaid features can share the same gaze or point of focus, while others can be part of a whole of which multiple vision lines are absorbed in different directions. I hope my effects provide some contradictions that can’t necessarily be experienced in actual living. Simple things like being in two places at once, being engaged and disengaged, moving and frozen forever. I also feel my style and technique lean more toward sharpness and clarity, which contradict and compliment the disorder that’s happening in my work.
Sometimes I think these elements might provide me with a sense of some of the differences between the life an object has—in this case the painted likeness of a person—and the limitations of an actual person. At other times I think I’ve ended up making self-portraits and not minding it so much.
