50 Self-Portraits: DONE!

Today I officially finished my project, with the completion of redos of No. 2 and No. 31. I actually wasn’t anticipating being finished today at all, but both pieces went fairly quickly.  Once I saw that I was getting further along, I was pretty determined to finish when it became clear that this was going to be possible today. I’ll admit that working on No. 31, the final piece, was rather excruciating. I drove myself a little crazy going back and forth thinking contradictory thoughts to myself.  On one hand, I felt like I was getting lazy, letting my anxiousness to finish get to me,  and therefore not working enough on the piece which could possibly lead to an unfinished looking piece. On the other hand, I simultaneously thought that  I was overworking the piece and working on it just to keep working on it. I’m always very conscious about overworking a piece; gesture is so important in my work and I think that you can lose a feeling of gesture and spontaneity really quickly when a piece has been labored too much.

(above) Self-Portrait No. 2 (redo)

(above) Self-Portrait No. 31 (redo)