REMIX

MDIHS NAHS SPRING 2024 SHOW

Students remixed Norman Rockwell's "Triple Self-Portrait" with mediums of their choice, and recreated their own interpretations of the piece.

Scroll to see their work...

Cora Lester

Identity Hues, 2024

Oil Pastel

In this piece, the contrasting colors represent the collage of who I am. In the beginning I procrastinated this piece because it was hard to think about taking an up close look at myself. I enjoyed paying attention to the detail of my eyes bags and frizzy hair; the things I’m generally self conscious of and try to cover up made this piece what it is. I am my flaws, I am my strengths, I am my fears, and I think that’s the beauty of a self portrait.

Isabelle Peterson

But I Forget Myself..., 2024

Digital Media

Sometimes, I remember that I exist. This generally comes as a bit of a shock to me. While I do think of myself fairly regularly (perhaps more than the ordinary person, sometimes I suspect myself of being vain, or at the very least, navel-gazing,) it is in a shallow sort of way, and often has very little to do with my actual identity. Despite this sense of disconnect, I realize that I probably did idealize myself when completing this portrait, which is telling enough. Even at five, I would always paint myself in the most beautiful colors, unconsciously stripping away any outer flaws to reveal the more interior.

Of course, despite all of this fruitless self absorption (lying somewhere between self adoration and shame) my name, my clothing, the way I dress - often like mere formalities to me, labels convenient for little besides identification purposes.

Only through acting, or being perceived does some distinctive identity of mine become discernible, an identity which often comes as a surprise, or seems startlingly divergent from my private sense of self. There is a certain horror to remembering that you are alive - and worse, sentient. Most of the things I enjoy doing require some erasure of self: acting, writing, reading; in all, one sheds their identity and takes up another.

My “portrait” is a sequence of images gradually increasing in size, zooming into the eye, and then finally the pupil (which is really just a hole, absorbing the light cast into it.) This blankness, a color that only exists in absence, or when provoked by outside stimuli, encompasses the idea of any realizable “self” I might pretend to have. In completing this portrait, I may have made the mistake of examining myself a little too deeply, and realized that as inscrutable as the concept of self is, it is also void; a mirage that disappears under close observation.

No matter.

Ila Boatright

Passing By, 2024

Pen & Ink

Because Norman Rockwell’s piece depicted himself three times, I did as well. Each representation of myself is based upon three stages of my life, my younger self, my current, and my future. The trees accompany these people, “me”, to connect some part of identity to them. This has been fun to create.

Jocelyn Verrill

May the Fourth Be With You, 2024

Mixed Media

When I was coming up with ideas for this remix project, I got stuck on the helmet imagery and thought of things I could shift it into. Then it just came to me. It’s the month of May, star wars month! With that, I had a stormtrooper helmet and a goal in the making. I knew that I wanted to make R2D2 as the bucket next to the canvas and I knew that I couldn’t put R2D2 without Luke. With this in mind, I had not only the main character for my piece but the Star Wars saga as well. I wanted to do something creative with the three perspectives for the self portrait, so I thought it would be cool to show different cinematic stages of Luke. I originally wasn’t going to have a background until someone gave me the idea that it may help solidify the piece even more. So of course I had to make the famous sunset scene on Tatooine. I would say that I’m really happy with the way it came out and I feel accomplished with the amount of effort put into creating the piece as well.

Abigail Butler

Bones, 2024

Watercolor

By painting a skeleton as the main image, I am showing how art is timeless. In 100 years or more, we will still have art to look back on and create. We can notice how people saw things, felt, and dreamed of through art and we still will be able to 100 years from now. That is why I chose a skeleton. The making of this piece was tricky with all the small details, but it’s the small things that count. Deeper meaning or not, it’s still important to take time and think about the small stuff.

Lily Guess

As for Me, 2024

Watercolor

When creating my own version of Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait I knew I wanted to take the idea literally because of my love for the original piece. I decided to create my own version of the painting by considering how I look during my creative process. I included three depictions of myself, one tiny camera view, one cartoon, and one intently creating version. I also wanted to include the way that Norman Rockwell had inspiration photos of other artist’s work around him, so I included references to things that inspire me such as The Oh Hellos, Studio Ghibli, and Norman Rockwell himself. I also wanted the things around me to be a representation of myself, a fourth self portrait of sorts. From the room that I’m in, to the sketchbooks around me, to the clothes I’m wearing, all of it relates to reality. I also made the decision to portray myself in the longest and most important part of my drawing process, sitting and thinking.

Alexander Burnett

Fish in a Sea Full of Stars, 2024

Mixed Media

Katie Horton

Ugly Baby Phase, 2024

Acrylic

Since I was young I had always drawn faces. I loved creating depth, drawing the contours, highlights. I always enjoyed adding the little details and “imperfections” of the human face, because to me, despite what society deems as “imperfect,” I have always been able to find beauty in others. My artwork rarely referenced real people, as I wanted my imagination to guide me, I always found myself drawing or painting other people. However, with the prompt following a self portrait I was challenged to paint myself. Due to being a perfectionist, painting myself seemed impossible. There are so many qualities that deter me from liking my face, and having to paint said qualities was my biggest challenge. As I was first brainstorming ways I could avoid painting my face, the perfectionist in me kept stopping me and getting in the way of making any progress. All of a sudden, I remembered something a camp counselor taught at the Summer Festival of the Arts (SFOA), as she was teaching us how to properly draw a face, she mentioned the “ugly baby phase,” a name of a stage where the drawing of a face is really rough, with only shapes to outline what would become parts of the face. Remembering this helped me to push through with my art and create something that is not necessarily “perfect” but human.

Evelyn Hardy

Living a Lie, 2024

Colored Pencil

For creating my piece based off of Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait, I knew right away that I wanted to recreate his idea of having three perspectives of one subject. At first glance my piece might look silly or comical, but to me it represents the concept of someone believing they are better and more superior than they actually are. I decided to use a clownfish and a shark as my subjects to depict how people can believe a lie even when the truth is right in front of them. I used colored pencils and an abstract and childish style to further display the ignorance and childlike nature of these kinds of people.

Jesse Patterson

RAT, 2024

Digital Painting

What is more loathed than a rat? To be a rat is to be shunned, to be shunned is to be afraid, isolated, unsure. But to know yourself is to break free of the fear, and be given a chance. The chance to rewrite yourself the way you wish to be seen. And yet, what does the rat choose to recast itself as?

Morgan Matthews

Bone, Muscle, Flesh: Disconnected, 2024

Acrylic & Pen on Glass

This piece is out of my comfort zone in terms of medium, despite it being an acrylic painting (something I've done many times) it has a three dimensional element due to being painted on three separate panes of glass. Part of me wants to twist this into adding some meaning to the piece (me of course being a three dimensional human being) and more importantly the fact that I branched out with this piece. I tried new things and even though I'm not entirely pleased with how it came out, painting on glass was not actually very enjoyable. I grew as an artist and perhaps even as a person while creating it.

Ultimately this was a very loose interpretation of Norman Rockwell’s Triple Self-Portrait, while I do love the composition of his piece I was, in the end, more attracted to the base idea of a self portrait that is triple in some way, I ended up landing on the idea of three layers. Surprisingly I've actually been tasked quite more than usual with this endeavor of creating some sort of self portrait and while I do not hate doing self portraits they can be tricky, partially as someone who struggles with a sense of self due to a plethora of reasons. This is why, oftentimes when it comes to self portraits I often break myself down to my bare components. After All those are the things that are concrete about myself that I know are applicable to me as a person, these bare components always come out to be things such as; bone, muscles, flesh all the things that make me up.

This previously mentioned struggle of identity (of some sort of disconnect) comes from probably a few places but, most notably my identity as a transgender man, which oftentimes creates a disconnect from me and my body. In addition on occasion I have struggled with some sort of dissociation (perhaps connected to the previous issue) but, I have had moments where myself and my body and I feel misaligned, my body and self forming some sort of venn diagram rather than overlapping. I wanted to use three different glass panes in order to represent this, technically they’re all together (layered) yet they’re still distant, not right up against each other still housing that disconnect.

Angela Zhang

Ideals, 2024

Graphite on Paper

Whenever I look at myself in a mirror or a photo, I always become judgmental of my appearance, whether intentionally or subconsciously. I observe and obsess over what I wish to change or am unhappy with and hope that I can change them just by willing them to be. Ironically, I dislike looking at myself yet I obsess over my appearance whenever something that reflects is nearby. I’ve never done a self-portrait before and have refrained from doing so because I feared that I would want to draw an ideal of myself rather than what existed. Surprisingly, I was looking at myself without any form of self-critique or judgment. However, through this process, I learned from my mother that I exaggerate the areas where I didn’t like.

The reason I included my phone was because I was told that oftentimes an image distorts how you look. Our phones in many cases capture an image of us that we want ourselves to be. They capture our ideals and do not capture how we are seen by others but how we wish to be perceived. They only show people what we want them to see but do not portray everything we are. Then again, physical appearances will never fully be able to show anyone everything. This drawing will serve as a reminder for me to be less self-critical of myself. I wish to be happier without forcing myself into a reality with only my ideals. A reminder that your qualities do not only come from the way you look but so much more underneath our faces and our phone screens.

Sophia Murphy (not pictured)

Who am I, 2024

Gouache

For this painting remix, I took the original piece Triple Self-Portrait by Norman Rockwell and put my own twist on it. I really wanted to express myself in a way that felt true to who I am. I used colors and shapes to show different sides of my personality and emotions. It's kind of like a snapshot of how I see myself right now. I hope when people look at it, they can see a little bit of themselves too, maybe even relate to what I'm feeling. It's like a way for me to connect with others through my art.

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