Musings On My Self Portrait, 2020
Self Portrait, 2020. Oil, cold wax and collage on paper covered canvas, 60cm x 45cm. Anne Kearney
Self Portrait, 2020, is part of my Structural Integrity body of work. This series was inspired by my interest in the complex relationship between people and their environments. The places we live and the people who come into and out of our lives all impact who we are. On the one hand, we get a huge amount of support from our environment – the things that surround us give us structure and help hold us up. But on the other hand, our environments can become constraints, limiting our choices and opportunities. I find this struggle and how we navigate it fascinating.
In 2020, the idea of tension between environmental support and constraint got very specific and personal. Covid-19 flew around the world and we all know what happened next. The self-portrait is a response to what I was feeling during the quarantine and early stages of the pandemic.
On the one hand, I was grateful to be living in Barcelona. Spain has a strong and widely trusted public health system and vaccines are not particularly controversial. The health and mask mandates seemed reasonably well thought out (especially given how little was initially known about the behavior of the virus) and most people followed them without a huge fuss. In short, I felt supported.
Yet on the other hand, the stringent health measures, the limited mobility, and the stress of the whole situation were so constraining that at times I felt suffocated. Like everyone else, the new reality of my environment meant that I was cut off from people and routines. I had an overwhelming sense of being held in a weird stasis, of losing time and opportunities.
Support and constraint. Stillness and struggle. Security and loss.
My intent with the self-portrait was not to capture a physical likeness but to capture an emotion – not only what I was feeling, but what I suspect many others were also feeling. I used images of myself (both a photo and a mirror) as references in the initial stages of the piece. I also drew inspiration from the muted colors, scaffolding, and netting found at the construction sites around my apartment. For me, these sites were a good metaphor for the ideas of construction, support, and constraint.
The final work does not look much like me (except around the eyes, I am told). It does, however, represent how I was feeling in 2020.
How were you feeling in 2020?
