After I look within the mirror, I can’t see myself. Maybe the problem I expertise is as a result of static posture I have to assume in entrance of the glass. If I look away, I’m gone—like a butterfly escaping the online. I can arrange mirrors to view all sides of my head. In profile I look as if I have been targeted on one thing else, another person. myself from the again, I’m shocked by the roundness of my shoulders. However once I see myself obliquely on this means, it isn’t a real encounter: I can’t have interaction with myself.
After I first began to attract on the age of fifteen, I made schematic makes an attempt at self-representation. I depicted the bump on the top of my nostril, my lengthy neck, and my darkish eyebrows. The ensuing drawings have been lifeless. I felt freer once I labored from different folks I knew effectively—higher than I knew myself.
The primary self-portrait that regarded like me took place when a charcoal picture I’d made in a sketchbook printed itself onto the alternative web page. The shadowy imprint miraculously urged a likeness, whereas the preliminary drawing was huge of the mark. Was it the reversal that made this self-portrait genuine? A mirror picture is a reversal, in spite of everything. I attempted the trick once more, but it surely by no means labored.
Three years later I made a drawing that efficiently captured my look. As soon as extra it appeared to occur accidentally. I had executed a sequence of ink-wash self-portraits. I didn’t assume any of them have been good, so I discarded them. They lay round on my studio ground for some time, and I typically absentmindedly walked over them—the splintered floorboards have at all times been suffering from tubes of paint and scraps of deserted artworks that I ignore as a part of my pure habitat. Sooner or later a pal visited and instantly noticed that one of many self-portraits on the ground was good (see illustration at high of article). I hadn’t realized this in any respect till it was identified to me.
Thirty years handed earlier than I felt free sufficient to signify myself in an ambitiously new means. My mom was my important sitter for all these years. By some means her adored picture blotted out my very own. It took her dying in 2015 for me to have the ability to begin to see myself. After which I discovered a means in.
I’m one in every of 5 sisters. We’re at all times being in contrast with each other, as folks have a tendency to match one girl with one other within the wider world past the household unit. I don’t assume males endure to the identical extent from this diminishment. A person retains his singularity even in a gaggle of males. I made a decision to attempt to confront the advanced drawback of feminine individuality in my self-portraits.
In 2013, when my mom entered her ultimate sickness, I made a sequence of 5 work. In every one I’m wearing an an identical black sweater. I depicted simply the top and shoulders: the main target is on the face. On the exhibition, I needed my viewers to ask themselves whether or not these have been portraits of sisters, or whether or not they have been of the identical individual; I wanted them to query “likeness” and what it’s that makes an individual a person.
These self-portraits felt like a breakthrough to me. I hadn’t tried to pedantically copy my reflection. With every one I started by trying within the mirror, after which I turned away and dreamed up the picture of myself. My dreaming self-portrait was psychologically more true than my mirrored picture. The glass that separated me from myself continued to frustrate me, nevertheless. I needed to get rid of it, to smash it and get on the essence of who I’m. My mirrored “she” wasn’t the true “I.”
I thought of Lucian Freud’s work of me, the place I used to be the mannequin, not the artist. They have been all made once I was a younger girl—the primary once I was twenty, the final once I was twenty-seven. I’ve by no means sat for an additional artist since, but the label of “muse” has caught. It’s a irritating and corrosive feeling to be compartmentalized on this means.
I puzzled whether or not I might undermine the lazy public labeling in order that I could possibly be seen because the artist I’m. Maybe my look as represented by one other artist may give me an goal perception into myself. Might I take management of Lucian’s illustration of me? By capturing myself by way of his eyes, might I free myself?
Bare Lady with Egg (1980–1981) was his first portray of me. I used to be a really self-conscious, self-doubting twenty-year-old then, not sure of my desirability and traumatized by the information that Lucian was sleeping with different ladies. I used to be deeply in love with him, and I felt susceptible and uncovered and powerless. The younger girl with the alarmed eyes and vanquished expression, as depicted by Lucian, bore little resemblance to my inside “I.” There isn’t any means that his portray might have been titled Portrait of Celia Paul. I used to be most positively a Bare Lady, mendacity on a black bedsheet.
In my very own portray, Ghost of a Lady with an Egg (2022), I omitted Lucian’s arbitrary element of the peeling plaster on the partitions by the mattress, which I felt was extraneous. My physique is surrounded by the swirling black material, a sea of darkish water on which I’m floating. My physique could be very white. I’ve turned a meaty illustration of flesh right into a haunting and religious one.
Painter and Mannequin (1986–1987) is the final portray Lucian product of me. It reveals me standing at left with my head bowed, a paintbrush in my palms, and my naked foot on a paint tube. A unadorned male determine with splayed legs is mendacity on the couch in entrance of me.
After Lucian’s dying in 2011, I made a portray additionally titled Painter and Mannequin (2012). In it I’m seated alone within the heart of the portray with my eyes downcast, and my palms are resting in my lap as if I have been sitting meekly for my artist-lover. However the costume I’m carrying is encrusted with paint—I wipe my brush on my garments whereas I’m working—and the tubes of paint at my toes are my very own: on this self-portrait, I’m each painter and mannequin.
In 2022 I went one step additional. In a portray that I’ve titled merely Painter, I’m not anybody’s mannequin. Whereas I’ve adopted Lucian’s primary composition, I’ve erased the male determine he depicted. I stand at left and maintain my brush in my clasped palms. My palms forged a shadow that resembles a breast, as they do in Lucian’s portray, and my naked foot is positioned on a squeezed-out paint tube. However my subject material is a sea-like absence. There isn’t any lover in entrance of me ready to oblige. My portray is a starkly pared-down self-representation, robust and true to the solitude of my self-discipline.
In my London studio I lately accomplished Colony of Ghosts (2023), a portray impressed by John Deakin’s well-known 1963 {photograph} of 4 giants of the so-called Faculty of London—Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and Michael Andrews—eating in Wheeler’s restaurant in Soho. I made a decision to depart out the fifth diner—Tim Behrens, sitting uneasily on the far left—as a result of I don’t admire his artwork, and since he was solely included as a result of he sat for Lucian. I didn’t wish to be recognized with him because the muse.
I toyed with the concept of titling my portray Homage, Dommage, Residence, however I assumed that, mentioned aloud, the beat would sound like a nursery rhyme. I supposed the portrait as an homage to those nice artists, but I felt excluded by them due to my gender—therefore dommage, the French for “shame” or “pity.” They signify “home” to me as a result of I belong amongst them, even when they’ll’t let me in. I additionally thought of titling it Belonging/Not Belonging. I puzzled whether or not it’s a supply of tension to realize acceptance into the male membership, and whether or not for a lot of males the symbols of standing override different wishes. I feel the boys in my portray look slightly insecure for that reason.
Though they type a homogeneous group, every man in my portray is singular and distinct and has a really particular presence. Freud is gazing unflinchingly on the viewer. Bacon, with one eye closely lidded and the opposite huge open, is projecting an actorly aura. Auerbach by no means appears to be like on the individual he’s talking to; he retains his eyes lowered or shut. Andrews—the one Englishman amongst them—is self-effacing. The portray measures 4 by six toes, the identical dimension as Andrews’s The Colony Room I (1962), and I’ve used the identical viridian inexperienced for the partitions. Within the Deakin {photograph}, there’s a romantic portray in a round body hanging on the wall behind the artist-diners. I’ve echoed its positioning, with its depiction of an unworldly panorama, nearly like these shimmering paths or rivers resulting in the mountains that type the backdrop in Italian work, suggestive of an unreachableness, a misplaced paradise, a craving.
All 4 males at the moment are lifeless; they inhabit a distinct dimension. Within the portray I’ve cleared the desk of its litter of plates, glasses, and napkins. The tablecloth resembles shifting water, or an ectoplasm. The lads are taking a look at me, taking a look at you, from out of the unusual chilly land of the lifeless.
I typically really feel like a ghost myself. I’ve lived on this condominium—which can be my studio—since 1982, and my recollections are extra alive than my current existence. As a pair to Colony of Ghosts, and in the identical dimensions, I’ve painted a self-portrait that I’ve titled Reclining Painter (2023). I’m mendacity on my battered inexperienced chaise longue, and although my head is turned to the viewer, my gaze is inward: I’m pondering of the previous. I’m alone now, but the painted world I dwell in has accrued substance—my costume, the furnishings, the partitions, all over the place, each floor, is splattered and saturated with paint. The paint lives within the current tense, at all times.
I want to grasp Reclining Painter reverse Colony of Ghosts in order that the boys can observe me, and I can observe them, and in order that there might be an interplay between us.
The interplay between Lucian and me was about portray, and it was about love. We have been in a ten-year relationship, and I had a son by him. My son, Frank, and I are shut. When he was a toddler, I put up boundaries: my mom was his important carer in order that I might proceed portray. But now Frank and I can discuss to one another about something. My husband, Steven Kupfer, and I shared the whole lot, too, though we lived individually. Steven used to take a seat for me frequently, and I made many portraits of him.
When my mom was too frail to climb the eighty stairs to my studio, my sister Kate took over as my important sitter. I’ve painted all 4 of my sisters: Rosalind (known as Mandy by her household), Lucy, Jane, and Kate. However the sister who has sat for me most frequently is Kate. She and I don’t want to make use of phrases to know what we’re pondering. We talk with one another at a deeper degree. I’ve made a protracted sequence of portraits of her wearing white. The portraits of Kate are nearly self-portraits by proxy. I think about them hanging on a wall in a protracted line, providing peace.
After my mom’s dying, and with my rising confidence in self-portraiture, got here a necessity to specific myself in new methods. As a younger girl, once I was making my first makes an attempt at drawing myself, I additionally stored an occasional diary through which I recorded a few of my life and my feelings. I out of the blue felt an overriding want to hook up with this younger writing self. I began to make use of phrases once more, and I printed my first e book, Self-Portrait, in 2019.
A portray is sort of a fowl’s-eye view: you absorb the entire scene without delay. In writing, one sentence follows one other, like a journey on land. There have been issues I wanted to spell out to myself, to unravel and assume by way of. I wanted the ground-level narrative of writing to search out out extra clearly the course I ought to take. My world was turning into more and more narrowed all the way down to artwork alone: Lucian had died, my mom had died, my son had a brand new life along with his girlfriend and kids, my husband was dying of most cancers. Portray has at all times been the central impulse, however now it was the whole lot. It was essential to know what I used to be doing and the place I used to be going.
When Self-Portrait got here out, Rachel Cusk wrote an important, provocative article for The New York Instances Journal. Her textual content, which centralized my relationship with Lucian and the condominium he purchased for me all these years in the past, galvanized me into reexamining my private and inventive priorities. I’m, like Rachel, outraged on the means profitable male painters have typically abused their energy, ceaselessly treating ladies diabolically. However what higher solution to blow up the system than from inside? Rachel interpreted the dilapidation of my flat and my carelessness about its (and my) look as indicators of low vanity. I feel she was mistaken. By staying put in that Bloomsbury condominium, I can discover the drama of my life because it unfolds.
The house the place I dwell and work faces instantly onto the forecourt of the British Museum: I’m excessive above the timber and on a degree with the topmost triangular pediment, through which the enclosed immense statues of Greek Muses preside; the swarms of vacationers on the bottom are ant-like compared. In winter, when the branches are naked, the BT Tower is revealed behind the museum, to the left. That is my world, the theatrical backdrop to my one-woman present. I don’t discover that there are leak stains on the partitions and ceilings. I really like that my home windows are massive and full of gentle.
In a few of my work of my bed room, I’ve contrasted the horizontality of my mattress with the phallic verticality of the tower; in others, my mattress is in dialogue with the posturing grandeur of the museum’s façade. In A Room of One’s Personal, Virginia Woolf attributes her motivation to write down the e book partly to her anger on the lack of feminine illustration within the books that lined the cabinets of the museum’s huge studying room. Equally, I would love my work of the room of my very own to pose a query about gender—the quiet inside house versus the demonstrative showing-off of the outside house.
Rachel’s essay accommodates an outline of {a photograph} of me, Lucian, and Lucian’s daughter Bella, taken in 1983. Bella was twenty-two, I used to be twenty-three, and Lucian was sixty. Lucian is snuggling his face into my hair. I’m smiling in response. Bella has her hand on my shoulder, affectionately. Bruce Bernard took many images of us that day. I’m riveted by what they recommend. I’ve made work from them. There’s a feeling of intense claustrophobia in all of them.
By some means, as a result of we’re on a degree—Lucian just isn’t standing as painter however sitting with us—there’s an odd equality, as if we every had our designated components in a play choreographed by the photographer. The pictures have impressed me to think about our roles, and whether or not any of us might have damaged free or subverted the plot. Lucian appears to be as trapped within the state of affairs—by his want for love and a spotlight—as Bella and I are.
Rachel’s essay made me understand that I wanted to write down one other e book—to clarify the form of painter I’m. That e book turned Letters to Gwen John (2022). I love Gwen John, the Welsh painter who lived from 1876 to 1939, greater than another feminine painter as a result of we share the same vitality and solitary self-discipline. I really feel an intimate connection to her due to the various parallels in our lives. We each struggled to protect our inventive integrity whereas being overshadowed by highly effective male artists: she was Auguste Rodin’s lover and mannequin, as I used to be Lucian’s.
We additionally relied on males to supply a way of residence. After her mom’s dying, Gwen John lived in her father’s home in Tenby till she was sufficiently old to depart. She lived in Paris, modeling for artists together with Rodin, who paid for her lodgings. She lastly settled in Meudon on the outskirts of Paris, the suburb the place Rodin lived along with his spouse. Gwen John needed to dwell near him in order that she might think about she belonged.
I used to be born in India. My dad and mom have been Christian missionaries. We lived in a whitewashed, red-tile-roofed home on the campus of the theological seminary the place my father was principal in Kannammoola, a suburb of Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram). My sisters, my mom, my father, and I have been an odd sight, and we have been typically photographed by the Indian college students: my mom in her wide-skirted flowered attire, my father in his lengthy white cassock, the 5 little ladies in fairly frocks. From the start, I felt each displaced and targeted on for my distinction. This can be a sensation that has continued.
I’ve by no means needed to create a house—therefore the bareness of the studio house the place I dwell—but “home” stays a persistent supply of craving. My household returned from India to England once I was 5, and we moved home each 5 years. The flat the place I’ve lived for forty-three years contrasts with the upheaval of my childhood and symbolizes stability. But my longing for “home” just isn’t glad.
The homes the place I lived as a toddler and younger grownup have been offered by my father: they have been all clergy properties that got here along with his job. Lucian purchased me the flat, which can be my studio; my husband left me his home in Kentish City. The lads in my life have offered me with my properties. The ladies who’ve mattered to me have supplied me a distinct form of help: they’ve believed in me. My mom—who sat for me with dedication for thirty years, and who introduced up my son with me—was there for me at all times, however I by no means related her with an concept of security. The lads have supplied me the safety of place.
I need the self-portraits I make any longer to convey a distinct form of safety. My current self-portraits, which I’m happy with, owe their success to the facility of my defiance. “I am a survivor,” they’re clearly saying. I’m self-enclosed, as if the paint have been my armor.
In 2022—the identical yr that I painted Painter—Gautier Deblonde made a sequence of dramatic images of me in my studio, and within the room adjoining the studio, the room the place I sleep. This was not lengthy after my husband’s dying. Grief had sharpened my notion of my singularity. I used {a photograph} of me sitting on the mattress, dealing with outward with my ankles crossed, to make a sequence of three massive self-portraits: Painter Seated in Her Studio (2022), Seated Painter (2023), and, lastly, Painter at Residence (2023). My costume, the partitions, and my slippers are all splattered with paint. That is the world that I alone have created.
The principle hazard of portray self-portraits is, after all, the potential of turning into a narcissist: to be so obsessed by one’s personal physique and inside ideas that the outer world and different folks haven’t any relevance besides as they relate to oneself. I’ve began to make portraits of individuals I don’t know so effectively—younger ladies, primarily. By way of portray these younger ladies, I want to be much less of a stranger to myself.
Within the spring of 2023 I did a seven-week residency at my gallerist Victoria Miro’s studio house in Venice. Throughout my keep there, I painted the younger ladies who labored on the gallery, and who taken care of me so kindly. I linked to the alternatives that have been offered to them: Ought to they be in a relationship, or ought to they be unbiased and free? Ought to they’ve youngsters or not? As I noticed their younger faces, I remembered my very own, and the years of early motherhood. How alone and susceptible I had felt then, as a younger single dad or mum, but maybe equally fascinating because the younger ladies I used to be observing now.
When Hilton Als made a number of these work for an exhibition that fall, he noticed that the principle theme was “women in various stages of life and therefore their dreams. And acceptance.” He got here up with the exhibition title: “Myself, Among Others.” After I returned from Venice, I assumed: I’m residence. It appeared like a distinct form of homecoming from any I had skilled earlier than. I had the sudden realization that I personally could possibly be residence. My younger self and I—we’re the identical individual. I can stretch out my outdated hand, with its age spots, and maintain my younger unblemished hand.
