Self Portrait 2011
Self Portrait..the idea of this work, which relates to different age groups, draws from psychology and how each person views things from different angles. As I studied these characters, I began to paint mental images of them in my mind, eventually leading to these drawings. I planned these paintings, then reconstructed and painted them again, this time from my own vision, and what I got from the personalities of these individuals.
The Idea of the work has tinges of irony and ambiguity. The artist didn’t paint this painting; the viewer did. The Model painted here is the artist, summarized in a series of sketches that were carried out by a group of people some of whom I know and others I do not know. These people painted their impressions, what they knew about me, how they saw me. Some people didn’t know anything about me except how I looked, as there wasn’t any direct contact with them. They painted the external lines, just as we paint the outer surfaces of things without going into their essences. Those who knew me, on the other hand, were able through the paintings, to capture a human condition in forms far from painting a self portrait. Graphics symbols marked psychological, sensory, emotional, and other inner feelings such as hatred, love, happiness, unhappiness, and others.
This work is not restricted to a particular age group; many children participated in interacting with the work, in addition to adults of both sexes. In the end, the product was a number of paintings that reflected me as a person. Each painting also reflected the inner nature of those individuals, their concepts of life and human nature, and what they themselves felt towards me or towards themselves. All the paintings reflect the various affiliations of this group of members of the community: cultural, social and human. Those symbols, lines and icons all have their place and interpretations in the record of human language, one which is not possible for us to interpret or deal with as we deal with normal vocabulary. The overall visual stimuli are a major input to understanding what is within the human self - (We see because there are things that can be seen).
The Idea of the work has tinges of irony and ambiguity. The artist didn’t paint this painting; the viewer did. The Model painted here is the artist, summarized in a series of sketches that were carried out by a group of people some of whom I know and others I do not know. These people painted their impressions, what they knew about me, how they saw me. Some people didn’t know anything about me except how I looked, as there wasn’t any direct contact with them. They painted the external lines, just as we paint the outer surfaces of things without going into their essences. Those who knew me, on the other hand, were able through the paintings, to capture a human condition in forms far from painting a self portrait. Graphics symbols marked psychological, sensory, emotional, and other inner feelings such as hatred, love, happiness, unhappiness, and others.
This work is not restricted to a particular age group; many children participated in interacting with the work, in addition to adults of both sexes. In the end, the product was a number of paintings that reflected me as a person. Each painting also reflected the inner nature of those individuals, their concepts of life and human nature, and what they themselves felt towards me or towards themselves. All the paintings reflect the various affiliations of this group of members of the community: cultural, social and human. Those symbols, lines and icons all have their place and interpretations in the record of human language, one which is not possible for us to interpret or deal with as we deal with normal vocabulary. The overall visual stimuli are a major input to understanding what is within the human self - (We see because there are things that can be seen).
