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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.