Phenomenology: Self-portrait (III)

This artwork will be represented by Young Soy Gallery from September 2024; queries may be directed directly to them

This is a self-portrait. Self-portraiture can sometimes be an "attempt to disclose how the world comes to appear" (Phenomenologist and existentialist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in his essay "Cézanne's doubt"). There is a purposefully blurred line between the background colours and the subject/object (definitions that change based on perspective) in this work.

It is my hope that those who look at self-portraits bear this in mind: “Yet before most self-portraits, because of the exclusive complicity existing between the eye observing and the returned gaze, we have a sense of something opaque, a sense of watching the drama of a double-bind which excludes us" (John Berger).

18 (h) x 24 (w) inches, oil paint on primed canvas (non-stretched, framed)