Untitled (self portrait)

This piece was a series of what-if's. What if I try tenebrism. What if I make the background really dark. What if I put the hands in. What if I have the figure recede into the shadows. What if, instead of the classic hot colors, I use the cool colors of natural light, with the greens of the garden reflected into my face? What if, instead of starting a piece with my usual highly-reasoned narrative, I just go by feel and make all my choices based on what looks interesting? This piece told me why certain conventions (which I'm flouting) exist, why the hot palette is used, why backgrounds don't tend to go all the way to black, etc. I was the model simply because I needed a model. And since I had no narrative in mind, what came to the fore was what was on my mind: uncertainty of how the world is going and the barrage of bad news that hits us every single day. The way we press on nonetheless, in the dark, knowing we are in a dangerous time and that we must be present and clear-eyed to meet it. That meaning was not planned but it slipped in.