Our emerging social media can be revealing. How else can we see so much about our many “friends” so far away and seemingly removed from our lives? But it can also function as a kind of mask.  There is a pressure to fall into the visual formats of the day: the vacation photo, the artsy portrait, the graduation pic, the first day of school, the group shot after the dinner party, with an old pal side by side outside the restaurant…  On and on it can go.  I sometimes call it “Selfie-World.” Courtney (age 19 at the time of this drawing in 2015) has, like so many of her generation, come of age almost entirely within this social construct. Identities and visual poses have a playful flexibility.  They are almost like the work clothes that a young professional must choose to wear in the presence of a first employer.  They can be ill suited or a natural “fit.” We willfully grow into our identities as much as we sometimes accidentally accumulate them. Courtney (the daughter of Marsha’s brother Joel) is someone I have been aware of all her life so I have been able watch bits of her identity emerge and be assembled in just this way.  

 

But how to construct a drawing of Courtney? I could have chosen to work from one of the hundreds (thousands?) of photos of countless social situations that fill her social media accounts.  I considered this, but an older person sensibility within me acquired at some point during my own youth made me reject those images for not being “candid” enough.  Instead I chose this: a portrait Courtney took of herself with her computer’s camera (in her own bedroom perhaps? During mid Skype or Instant Messaging with friends?)  I think this is from one of her earlier years of high school and she looks much younger here than she does today.  I do see something candid here.  I see a person tentatively engaged in framing herself. I see the self that will construct her later social media presences.  But I also see the tween, the college student, and even the toddler.  There is something about that almost pupa like stage of transformation - during these precise teenage years - which can lend itself to showing larger identities. Think of the appeal of the “Throwback Thursday” Facebook post!

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Or, at least that is what I thought I was doing.  (Insert eye roll here) There was likely something hyper specific that was going on too.  

 

I liked the very dark tee shirt and the fact that I could use it to go almost fully black.  The overall drawing is exceptionally dark.  I thought that the strong darks would make for a better cradle for the strong tilt of the head.  I don’t think I had realized just how strong an oval the composition created until I was well into the final production (Brancusi or Modigliani anyone?)  Courtney’s original photo was very indistinct and hyper pixilated.  This sort of thing used to bother me (with my default notions about precision) But I have only recently realized that I can use this very quality to transform the original into the type of image that I want. Yes, blur and blorpy-ness can be an asset too.