Selfie Time

I used to be a fairly proficient artist and painter. I stopped painting when I got bladder and kidney cancer over forty years ago and unfortunately stopped drawing too. 

I was a neurotic mess when I painted. You're only as good as your last work and being good meant too much to me, sometimes turning me into an utter basket case.

I don't know why I told Carol Z that I would put a selfie in her last show, now that she is retiring from the library? What possessed me? 

But I did.

And did nothing until last week, a serious mistake.

I started working on a portrait that became an angst ridden german expressionist piece very quickly.

Here is a crop.

We couldn't have that, too many issues to resolve and I decided to just start sketching.

Things didn't get much better but I am admittedly rusty.

You draw and draw and draw and get into process instead of thinking about an endpoint and then one day maybe you find your groove again.

Not there yet.

I ended up working on this one a little more and framed it up and submitted it this morning.

Not really happy with it but I never am. Not too far away.

You can see it at the library.

One thing I want to do is to start drawing and painting regularly again and get back to where I once belonged, as Paul said.

I've been drawing since I was three or four years old.

You can check out quite a few different artist's self portraits at the library show which opens in a week.

Some of them are really good, certainly much better and more proficient than my feeble attempts.

But like McArthur, I shall return!