Rembrandt has painted over 90 self-portraits. Could his series be seen as a precursor to a modern day photo-diary, or is it just that he was his own most reliable model for studies of human features? Or was it something completely different? None but him, and perhaps not even he, can tell. Be it what it may, knowing that a Great One such as himself was an avid self-portrayer makes me feel less self-centered when I look upon the majority of my own subject matter.
I have been struggling to understand what drives me to fill pages and canvas with my own image and convoluted thoughts. There is something almost ritualistic in these thematic repetitions. One Tuesday afternoon, I finally understood: Painting, printmaking, carving, even academic writing, was, and is, my therapy. It is a way for me to understand myself; to express the inexpressible - the conflicts within me that plague me, my insecurities. It is my way of coming to terms with who I am by taking all those aspects of my self out of the fog and shades of my mind, find and define their form, name them, display them to the world to see (if the world so chooses), and only then accept them back.
I am interested in all the levels of a self - from the child to the woman. (Of the wrinkled one who is to come I usually dare not think.) I wonder often which one is more real or more true to the soul - which is the Prime Self, if such a thing does exist?
As I discover the layers and entangled patterns of my soul, the World’s own start to emerge before my eyes. Not that I understand it better, I merely love it more.
- Malena Mal Selic
I have been struggling to understand what drives me to fill pages and canvas with my own image and convoluted thoughts. There is something almost ritualistic in these thematic repetitions. One Tuesday afternoon, I finally understood: Painting, printmaking, carving, even academic writing, was, and is, my therapy. It is a way for me to understand myself; to express the inexpressible - the conflicts within me that plague me, my insecurities. It is my way of coming to terms with who I am by taking all those aspects of my self out of the fog and shades of my mind, find and define their form, name them, display them to the world to see (if the world so chooses), and only then accept them back.
I am interested in all the levels of a self - from the child to the woman. (Of the wrinkled one who is to come I usually dare not think.) I wonder often which one is more real or more true to the soul - which is the Prime Self, if such a thing does exist?
As I discover the layers and entangled patterns of my soul, the World’s own start to emerge before my eyes. Not that I understand it better, I merely love it more.
- Malena Mal Selic