Susan Wilson self portrait

 

 

The 'colour and emotion' in this 1996 self portait by Susan Wilson in the Usher Gallery is what attracted the attention of a men's support group, so it was highlighted on the Gallery's Twitter page, and so I've been brought to stand before it several times in my first few weeks living nearby.

I've tried holding my hands in the same position as she is in the portrait, which has emphasised and made unavoidable a puzzling and agonising by the artist intent on her image in a mirror in front of her.

Her website was easy to find, and the sole item in the 'About' section is an interview with art critic Michael Peppiatt from 2008, which mentions her care with what people wear in her portraits as well as her habit of using a large mirror for her self portraits.

Peppiatt comments on another work of hers 'bursting with some sort of unspoken longing... as if they had bottled up some sort of secret identity thats become almost painful' and that is what I see in this work as well.

Wilson observes that 'teaching people to draw from observation, it becomes apparent that they are drawing from a memory store of objects or places or how things look' and Peppiatt comments 'so we never get the direct confrontation - we are influenced hugely by what we've seen in the past', and Wilson's feels here like someone intent on getting past that.

Perhaps my interest in the picture arises in part from an increasing awareness of how our seeing, perceiveing, remembering, arguing and writing are each also much more dependant on our brain reproducing what we expect to encounter, all necessarily inhabiting a managable limited distorted reality.

In the New Testament, the word 'mirror' (es-optron - the root of our word 'optician' is here) occurs twice.  In the interview, Wilson cites Paul's 'we see as through a glass darkly'; the translation 'glass' in 1 Corinthians 13.12 is esoptrou, the 'darkly' is ainigmati, a puzzle, a riddle (the root of our word 'enigma' is here).  

Almost more haunting is James 1.23, 24's awareness that we can observe ourselves (our 'birth face') in a mirror and then quickly forget what we look like (perhaps because, although James does not say this, we have a preferred memory store).  

Wilson's face, hands and stance here feel like a longing to be free from these limitations - what the two texts long for as to be fully known and to act out what we profess and intend.

And then, standing in front of the picture again yesterday, it felt like God puzzling away at me, agonising over my limitations of insight and action.  Her robe is encrusted with the paint of her creativity, and I am her workmanship (Ephesians 2.10 this time, sometimes given as her 'handiwork' even her 'work of art').