Evolution of the Self-portrait
Figurative artist Haley Hasler uses the self-portrait as a vehicle for larger narrative paintings
Atmy current solo exhibition, on view at Museum of Art Fort Collins, in Colorado, the walls are covered with paintings of one woman, in various guises, poses and narratives. I was asked to speak about the work. It was clear that one question had to be first addressed: why the self-portrait? I must answer this question for you before I tell you about my technical process, because the why and the how are intrinsically linked. It started with a practical problem: I needed a model. As an art student 20 years ago, models were expensive, and I found in my always-at-the-ready reflected image a means to taking on the problem I was obsessed with: how to paint a face. This began a 20-year inquiry into the purpose and meaning of the self-portrait in today’s world, with oil paint and brush on canvas. At the beginning, while I was in the early stages of grappling with the meaning and direction of my work, I denied that it was self-portraiture at all; I insisted that what I was interested in was a female protagonist, and my face and figure were merely the models standing in for this alter ego. But when, with a little more money in my pocket, I began hiring models, I found I was unable to access an interior landscape that I had begun uncovering at the heart of the work. With a model before me, I became entranced with the outer persona; the act of closely examining another person became intriguing in itself, but it led the work in a very different direction. It remained in the realm of one person’s outer appearance being observed and documented— always from the outside—by another. This was interesting, but I could not access the conflict I had begun to find so fascinating: between the interior and exterior themselves. Here is the unique privilege of the self-portrait: it contains the act of the interior self, looking at and recording the exterior self. This seems to me to be an investigation containing arching relevance in today’s world, in which issues of selfhood and identity are profound questions that modern humans must grapple with. First, however, another practical problem presented itself. (Practical problems often lead to interesting discoveries.) When painting oneself, there is the problem of constant movement—both while simply working, and when the artist wishes to step back and take a critical look at the work. Here is where the display mannequin comes in. Walking past a going-out-of-business sign in a store window almost 20 years ago, I stopped in and acquired my first mannequin. In addition to offering a body to clothe, light and position, the mannequin opened up a whole world of “still life” arranging, and hence, a whole new realm of narrative possibility. I begin a new painting by building the setup with the display mannequin. Both the setup and the painting itself will change throughout the painting’s progress, and I know this going in, but I begin with the elements or theme that interest me. These may be a narrative idea or a color/compositional idea, or a combination of both. It is a much like building a still life, but large in scale and centering on the display mannequin, which will be become the self-portrait in the painting. In the case of Portrait with Burning Bush, as with many of my paintings, I started with a source from art history:
Madonna of the Burning Bush by the 15thcentury French painter Nicolas Froment. I am a mother of young children, and something about the character of Mary, holding her child, unharmed, remote and yet hemmed in by in her private miracle, intrigued me. To understand more, I needed to paint it. I knew that my “burning bush” would become a group of domestic elements: geraniums, colored lights, toys and food. I began building the setup with this loose idea, and soon the colors, lighting, and other compositional elements began to guide me.