It’s that time of the year again when I decide to start working on a self portrait, so I figure it was about time I showed these in here. I’ll consider making individual posts, but for now let me present them all together.
I started painting these self-portraits in December of 2018, when I first realised I was trans and non binary. I wanted to show the world how I see myself, how I felt, how I understand my gender expression and existence within my body. It was a very cathartic, enjoyable and emotionally charged experience so the following year I decided to repeat the feat and draw another one… and here we are.
Nowadays I use these portraits as a way to check in with myself, evaluate my relationship with my own body and how it has been living within it for the past year. How I feel, what I hope for, what I dread, what I accepted… a way to record the changes, both physical and psychological. (And also as an excuse to paint, because I don’t tend to do that, ever, I like the comfort of line art too much.)
2022 has been a tumultuous, exciting, stressful year for a myriad of reasons and I can’t wait to see how that will be reflected in my next self-portrait. (For starters, I got top surgery and started HRT, so that’s certainly a major change, if anything!) Check back at the end of January, hopefully the new painting will be done by then!
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, scenic designs for Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute); The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of the Night [Königin der Nacht]; Entwurfzeichnung zum Bühnenbild, Berlin, c. 1816.
