Self Portrait - 2022

An abstract Self-Portrait I put together in 2022.

Like myself, it is messy, complicated, colourful, and is pieced together of many wildly varied, fractured pieces - but holds together as one unified creation.

Segments were created using real life photography, scanned painting and drawing, Photoshop, and Canva. The image was then printed on canvas and altered with Sharpies, pencils, cheap acrylics and the not-so-cheap but oh-so-beautiful BLACK 3.0 from CultureHustle. I incorporated screenshots from my games, childhood photographs run through distorting filters, & a selfie run through DeepDream tech (a machine learning technology that paved the way for many now-popular forms of generative AI - for better or for worse).

Using DeepDream, two segments were created using the reference images of a Van Gogh (misdiagnosed ginger artist labelled as ‘weird’ - I couldn’t resist), another segment uses one of my own previous paintings as reference, and a final segment uses DeepDream itself to create a dream-like, psychedelic impression.

Self Portrait was displayed on the walls of Kahaila cafe, Brick Lane, Shoreditch for the month of August 2022.

This painting was made to serve as a time capsule myself/life at the time - as well as a broader statement on the person I saw myself as.

I still see me when I look at it.