Stockroom: one print is in the stockroom, and can be framed if you like [turnaround time for framing approx. 4 weeks]

Artwork: Special edition of 5

Medium: Gold leaf, acrylic paint, pen, pencil on archival paper

Size: A2 Print size 60 x 42cm

Notes

When I first made this artwork, I thought it was a pretty picture. It was amusing to call it a self-portrait, amusing to draw on a golden crown. Draw some hair in a style like mine. Give her a profile like mine. Put my favourite necklace on her. Put spots on her dress like I’d always like to wear but never quite do because for the fabric to look like this in real life, it’d have to be Fortuny and I ain’t got the cash for that :-)

As I named her, I was aware the blue didn’t only refer to the dominant colour but didn’t think too much of it. I was too busy busting my ass trying to complete all the other artwork for the collection.

As I write this today, a couple of months after I made her, I see so much more. I see why I made her. Why I named her.

Yes, she is a woman in the centre of her own life. Sitting in her own power, in a dress of her own making. The gold of her flickers in the light.
I’m proud of her. This woman that I am.

What I also see in this work, especially in the roughly re-drawn profile which I etched in with a small blade, is her sadness. Her blueness. She is trying very hard to keep her chin up and her crown on but make no mistake it’s difficult for her, and she feels the weight of of all that glittering metal.

But blue is also water, of which she is mostly made. She’s surrounded by it. Its fluid qualities echo her own.
The water helps balance the weight of that other blueness.

It seems to me this artwork really is a self-portrait in the deepest sense of the word. She shows me as I am, right now in 2022. Having fashioned my own crown, I am sitting in the centre of the life I’ve made for myself. I am proud, and also hurting. Only just in balance. I like her a lot, this woman. I feel for her too.

Her details

She is produced in a special edition of 5, with numbers 2-5 available.
Her crown is gold leaf and acrylic paint,
her outline is etched with a knife.
Her decoration is pencil and pen applied over archival paper.
She is A2 [59x42cm], plus her frame, which is a crisp white to hold her solid, and museum glass for clarity and protection.