Here's Lookin' at Me Kid

Rembrandt is said to have painted around 80 self-portraits. I say "is said" because the art history folks want a little wiggle room. The issue is that Rembrandt used his self-portraits as exercises for his students, so it is hard to always determine which paintings are his and which might be the efforts of his more talented students. Still if it were 60 or 90 that is still a lot of self-portraits for one of the big names in the Dutch Golden age. The experts agree on that.

However, there is some disagreement as to why the big R was so into "selfies." Imagine him with an iPhone and a Facebook account. No, on second thought don't do that. Beyond creepy. Anyhow, some folks believe that, particularly for the early images - painted in his late 20s - the intent was advertising. "See what cool portraits I can paint! Wouldn't you like me to do yours?" Then in later years he seemed to be experimenting with various effects. Maybe examples for those students? And towards the end of his career, with bankruptcy nudging at his heels, a bit of what I have recently learned is called "self care." "Yeah, I may not be as popular as I once was, but I can still, by god, paint!"

I dunno. But it is enough for me to have one of the Old Masters confirm that it is alright to engage in this kind of image making. Yet, I face a couple of major obstacles in this endeavor. First there is the old biggie - I can't draw reality, you know like recognizable faces, people, pets, flowers, etc. Hence my obvious inclination to make things up. But I have one benefit that Rembrandt had to do without - photography. I assume he used a mirror. Look at the mirror, put paint on the canvas. Mirror, paint, canvas. Mirror, paint, canvas and so on like that. My process is different. Print out the picture on big sheet of paper. Look at self, make up stuff to go around me. Look at self, make up more stuff and so on until I came up with this image.

Which brings us to second obstacle between my image making and Rembrandt's. (See how I am subtly ignoring the whole issue of artistic quality and ability here? Shhhh.) Rembrandt apparently did a couple of self-portraits a year, giving him a rich chronological tapestry of his life. I almost never do selfies. So I sort of had to settle for this one which I call Portrait of the Artist as An Old Dude. And I'm only cheating a little bit, the picture was taken in December of '21. So do the math, still a legitimate representation of me in my seventh decade.

Obviously the next step is to add the color. I have begun that process - with a theory. The idea was to match parts of the photo with color bits that would spread out throughout graphic. Sort of putting the "self" in self-portrait. And I did that. But I forgot that the colors talk to each other - strongly suggesting that they partner with another color. Here and then there. And then over there. They have begun that dialogue, so I am slowly losing all control over the palette.

Who knows what they will come up with? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I'll keep you posted.