The Self-Isolation Residency 19th April 2020: Day 21

Today has been another day of details and that judgement of what and what not to include. An early feature of today's work was defining the outlines and details of the bottle and glass on the desk; in many ways I think that these help to establish the level of detail for the whole painting. These are the types of objects that are so important to this painting, they are objects which I have specifically selected as being things that 'tell part of my story' as to who I am. In some ways it could be said that this painting success could be judged as to how much a person who doesn't know me could learn about me from this painting.

This train of thought makes me wonder if I could or should go further with the details that I include; and if I do chose to go further how would that information, those details, be transmitted? In many ways I'd love to be able to include more details, for instance, I intend to have a book open on the seat of the chair. The problem is on the scale of something like this painting there is no real way in which I can adequately express what that book is. The same with music, I am including my stereo to show that I am listening to music, but how do I express what music it is?

I have been thinking for a while that perhaps this idea of the self portrait needs to express  media other than painting; an installation might possibly be a better way to go, but I'm not sure if an installation of my studio would be enough to be of interest to people. I'm also not sure at what point the studio would end and the art work begin? It could be argued that my studio is already the art work in that it is  the installation,  butit is not an art work as such, it is an actually real, working space.

There is actually already a type of example of what I am talking about here and although it is in an art gallery,, and it is fascinating,  it is not a work of art. The Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin has a permanent 'installation' of Frances Bacon's studio. This is not a reconstruction, after his death all the contents of his studio where relocated to the gallery to form this 'display'. This does a lot of what I am thinking about for my piece, but for me it does have a problem that it in itself is not a work of art, although it could be thought of as a self portrait.  I think I will have to explore this further, but for more information on Frances Bacon's studio click  here.