A Year in Self-Residency: 12 Self-Portraits

Self-Portrait I: Wounded Me, 2025. Mixed-media collage with encaustic wax finish on wood panel, 15” x 23 1/2”

Hey everyone!

Happy New Year! (Sounds tinny, doesn’t it?)

2024 was a doozie, and things seem to be ramping up for more startling changes in the coming months and years, which is all the more reason we need to find our anchors. What can we hold onto in a field of chaos where nothing seems solid or even real anymore?      

Everyone has to find the answers to their existential questions; for me, the answers lie both without and within. 

For decades, I have been working toward securing myself in the physical realm (i.e., shelter, work, family, finances, health, etc.), all of which helps to make me feel safe and secure, add meaning to my life, and help to ground me in this constantly and rapidly changing world. 

Now squarely in mid-life however, and having mostly established my physical world needs, my awareness and attention are seeking to go somewhere deeper within to a place that I think of as the essential or Deep Self; the part of my psyche that remains untouched by the circumstances of my physical life.

It’s not that I currently feel particularly anchored to this profound, ethereal rock; on the contrary, what I have been experiencing during all the collective turmoil and trauma that 2024 brought to the world (not to mention the historic firestorms that tore through the greater Los Angeles area, my birthplace and home for 46 years, in early January 2025) is the degree to which I feel untethered from my Deep Self. 

Material things—like money and houses— have always helped me feel secure in the world, but now feel like potential kindling for Nature’s balancing act, built on shifting sands. 

Like most Americans I know, I’ve been groping for the silver lining to the encroaching dark clouds of sociopathic ill-will that our new government embodies (particularly toward women and non-whites). But my disillusionment has me grasping at thin air and wondering where I can recover my nervous system and calm my fearful mind. As important as they are to our survival, money and houses don’t cure all anxieties.

My main intention over these past four years of making mixed-media collages has been to explore and play with making images. Along the way, I discovered that the images I was creating without forethought, were windows and mirrors of my psyche, akin to dreams when we sleep. This has encouraged me to re-orient myself to the inner landscape of my mind; rather than finding the unchanging, eternal place within me to which I can anchor my conscious self, however, I have encountered many obstacles to my throne of bliss and confidence. Those very same obstacles are the false beliefs, misunderstandings, repressed feelings, and unresolved relational traumas that have been accumulating since I was born.

Working through psychological obstacles is the task of every human life, to varying degrees. My artwork and essays are expressions of my healing journey and growing desire to free myself from all the things that feel false about me (or that are reactionary to a life lived rather than expressive of the soul trying to be born), so it seems fitting to be working out the answers to my deep questions through art, thereby creating a mirror to reflect on who and what I was, am, and have yet to become.

Giving structure to this natural healing (“wholing”) process, I’ve decided to embark on a self-appointed art residency project for 2025. 

A “residency” is a place where you dwell while making art. The place I am trying to dwell (or occasionally visit) is my Deep Self, so my work will reflect those wounds and psychological obstacles, enabling me to see with rounder, more compassionate eyes, what it is that keeps me from letting the mask down and living in closer contact with my vulnerability.

I am calling it a year in Self Residency, whereby I plan to complete 12 Self-Portraits, visual explorations of the themes I study and write about, posting one each month, with some essays along the way.

“Self-Portrait I: Wounded me” is my first self-portrait in this series. Original artwork and prints are available.

Thanks for sticking around! I’m happy to be coming out of hibernation and reconnecting with you about how life’s cycles are moving and shaping my life and artwork. More soon!