Essay: who am I?

Who am I?

Who am I? That is the questions artists have when they make self-portraits. By making self-portraits they want to show who they really are. Artists started to do this since the Renaissance. There are different ways to present who you really are.

You can show who you are by painting yourself like many artists did. For example Vincent Van Gogh did this several times. Every painter also has his own style to paint and this also tells a lot about the painter himself. The most distinctive quality of Van Gogh are: his brushwork, patches of colours side by side and the way he used complementary colours. The colours that are used tell also a lot about the feelings the painter wants to show in his self-portrait. If you use very cold colours like blue and green for example you give a very serious or depressive feeling. On the other hand if you use warm colours like orange and yellow for example you give a happy or confident feeling and if you use a colour like red you can give an angry impression but also a very warm, romantic feeling. So it also depends on the way you combine the colours.
Picasso also made portraits and self-portraits. These were totally different compared to Van Gogh because Picasso made portraits by showing different points of view in one portrait. So the results were sometimes very strange because you think you see the side view but than you also see the front view for example. Firstly you just see the portrait. But if you look more detailed to those paintings there is much more to discover. This tells a lot about people in different ways.

You don’t always have to paint or draw. You can also write a poem. With words and phrases you can tell a lot about people and about yourself. You can describe feelings, movements, emotions, things you do in you daily life. This also is a kind of self-portrait because you ask yourself the question: Who am I?
Not only by writing but also by using pictures you can tell things about yourself. A collage with pictures about what you like and what you do describes who you are. You can use pictures in a collage but you can also manipulate a picture of yourself on the computer. You need to find out in which way you can tell the most about yourself by just using that one picture. You can do many things with it like: using different contrasts and putting different accents in it. Every little detail gives information about yourself.

To conclude, you can tell a lot about yourself by making self-portraits in different ways. Many artist do this because they want to show who they really are and what is going on in themselves. It is all about: Who am I? There is always a lot to discover about yourself, by thinking about this question and showing ‘the answer’ in different ways with all kinds of details, you can tell much more about yourself than you ever could think of.

Claire Michieslen T3a                                                                   30/03/2012