I decided a while back to try painting a self portrait in oil. The reason I selected this particular photo is because it is a very good reference photo which contained elements of texture, color, reflection, light and shadow and would present for me a real technical challenge. Also, this is a photo of myself in a pair of pants which I designed and sewed out of silver, reflective fabric and fun fur circles on the ass.

I like the pose I am doing and this particular photo captures me in a style and pose which I think is reflecting how I feel inside; somewhat like a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. Like a bit of a transvestite style and pose and I was happy how my physique looks in that picture. The painting took me several weeks to draw the preliminary sketch and the actual painting took me roughly one week; working sporadically a few hours almost every day and night.I was feeling a great sense of insecurity in the beginning stages of painting this portrait as oil paint is not my medium of expertise (watercolor is)  Oil painting is opposite technique of painting with watercolor paints. With watercolor, the light tone is pre-existing on the paper and then one adds the darker tones. With oil, one has to add the darks first and the light tones last…so it’s really painting backwards. That, for me was a huge challenge.  The great thing about oil is this medium is one where corrections can be made. Watercolor is known as “the unforgivable medium” In other words, if one makes a mistake, the entire painting is then destroyed as it will not be correctable.
The allure for me of  painting in oil is the capacity to paint on a large surface, the strong, brilliant colors, the wonderful aroma of the linseed oil, texture and brilliance of the paint and the great technical challenge. There’s also present for me that deep sentiment for tradition.

Then there’s the element of convenience: One need not  necessarily frame an oil in order to display it so, this is making the art more readily presentable to an audience in 3D as opposed to watercolor, which must be framed and behind glass. This is a big problem to me because I have not the finance to frame all my watercolors. I can also command a higher fee with oils as the Public do not tend to take watercolor seriously as oil, even though it is far more stereotypically thought of to be the most difficult medium. Once the face was painted with relative accuracy, I got this notion that the spirit of the subject (in this case, me) in the painting was “woken up” and so then, I was able to relax and just have faith that I can at least try–remembering the words of the great, late painter (& Beloved Mother of my dear friend, painter Peter Nagy),

~Lillian Nagy~ “The only rule to art is: There are no rules”.

Remembering this ‘rule’ helps a person to relax and not take ones self so seriously. I am fairly happy with the outcome. The foliage provided a challenge and eventually, I was able to refrain from staring at the reference picture and basically invent the background; including plant life which does not even exist in real life but, rather from my imagination. My main reason for doing this and really any painting which I am not commissioned to do is : FUN.
Really, no matter what anyone does in Life, isn’t that what it’s all about?
In my opinion, YES.

Thanks for taking the time to view my art.
Sincerely,
Denise LaFrance

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