Are you an Archibald winner?

A few weeks ago I viewed the Archibald prize (one of the perks of moving to Sydney)... what a visual feast. A good portrait, it seemed, are those that portray a persons character, personality, & emotion within a certain context. Tim Storrier's winning self portrait entitled 'The histrionic wayfarer (after Bosch)' was invisible & faceless - yet this work carried an exquisite & complex sense of the subjects identity.

I appreciated reading about how artists would often put in various efforts to 'know' their celebrity subjects, in order to portray them in depth... but my favourite works were the self portraits because the best person the artist knows is themself! The canvas is approached with a whole life's worth of of ground work having being sourced already. This gives the artist license to paint from both knowledge & experience.

The people's choice winner, 'After Jack' was a haunting self depiction done from pictures taken of the artist as she mourned the death of her husband. On face value is a painting of a withering tormented aged lady. Context provided through words brought a much more emotive, chilling & real response from myself as the viewer.

This made me consider that a portrayal of our true self is illuminated when the context is communicated through words.

We're all living self-portraits, endlessly expressing things about ourselves in what we do & how we do it. Even when we don't know we're doing it! Anyone who views even a snippet of our expressions formulate their interpretations of what it means... & why we do it. The challenge is to use our words as well to scaffold that interpretation, so the truth of 'why' we express what we do is clearly told. Leaving it up to them to figure it out is not enough.