Self-portrait mixed media series

As I embark on my current stage of my womanhood - menopause, I am forced to confront my own feelings about aging and beauty. Examining and then scrutinizing my new face and body have become a regular practice for me.

My artistic practice involves working in series of anywhere between ten to thirty images

to thoroughly explore my ideas. Each new image I create within a particular series

builds upon the previous one. I am interested in not only using new images that I create

but re-purposing archived photographs to re-present them in new ways. Recently I have

become interested in how to connect analog and digital photographic media. My art

making is informed by my roles as a mother, daughter, and a secondary public school

arts educator.

For the past few years, I have been working on various series of self portraits using both

analog and digital imaging and sometimes combining both techniques.Through my

process or self portraiture, I continually learn not only about myself, but also the limits of

photography, and my own artistic comfort and risk-taking. My first series of collaged self-

portraits combined magazine images, my archived commercial fashion and beauty

work, and self-portraits captured on my smartphone.

The second self portrait collage series are an iteration of the previous set and

investigated the connection of appearance, media, and consumerism. By combining

and juxtaposing various self-portraits with found magazine images I activate the

insecurities, self-scrutiny, and fascination that I have to body image - my own and the

medias. Additionally, working by hand allowed me to piece together both physically and

mentally the mixed messages I continue to experience as an older woman regarding

youth, aging, and appearance. The stitched elements pay homage to the “fixing” that so

many women have learned to accept. The use of thread, nylon and lipstick suggest

both a covering up and connection among the various images in the series.

To further expand and explore my series of self portraiture I am interested in bringing

together generative images using Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), analog photographic found

fashion and beauty images, and new and archived digital self portraits. By combining,

layering, and juxtaposing these these three elements, I hope to investigate how the past

often informs the future. Artificial Intelligence is transforming how we learn, think and

create.