Self Portrait.

I wanted to do a Self Portrait in black and white. I was thinking about:

Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker.

Franz Jozef Kline (May 23 1910 – May 13 1962) was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s.

Black and white... I just wanted to reduce the palette to the basics.

Before I started this painting I purchased a mirror. The mirror can be scene in the top photograph to the left of the painting. There is a reflection of the car and window.

I did not really know when and how to stop this painting. I feel I could have kept working on it... killing it. But I decided to stop. There was a certain amount of freshness that I wished to not over work. I had to get the fuck out of the studio. So I just put my brushes down and left the studio. Turn the lights out, shut the door.

Above the right eye... the canvas is a window to the early stages of the painting. This was one of the primary reasons I stopped the painting... was to not over work the painting and to be able to keep this window to the foundational layer of the painting. I felt it made me think about the brain and temporary nature of the mind.

thank you

Patrick