“I stand in front of the mirror and look. At myself. ‘I’ then paint ‘myself’”. Like a female Sisyphus, the painter tries to accomplish this task – never reaching the pinnacle but capturing a ‘self-image’ in paint. Obedient, as painters are, to the contemporary obligation towards self-knowledge and self-insight. Untimely portraits.

A project doomed to failure! Post modernists have long since given up on the idea of ‘truth’ and ‘beauty’ (squandered?), or at least put them in brackets. The practice of painting also shows that there is more truth in the fragment, in the pieces, the cracks and the empty spaces, in the shifting of meaning across different canvases, than in one finished image. There is never a single truth in the individual painting, but many changing and shifting constructions that exist simultaneously.

In the creation of the self-portraits, besides the physical reflection in the mirror and the mental image in her head, this active fragmentation plays a role. There is room in the painting for both the white space and the lamp black. For empty holes, cracks, faults, unexpected or unwanted colours, and all kinds of deviations. It also makes room for intuition, feeling, memory, compulsion and desire.

More than that: the painting is a deliberate accumulation of this unexpected mess. It is a display of incompetence. The paintings parade their artificiality, their decorative flatness, flaunt their constructional flaws, and revel in the theatricality of their staring gaze. The painting celebrates the inability of the painter and the ignorance of the paint. No more resemblence. Long live imperfection!

And yes... Self-Portrait Without Title. Of course, What else do you call something that you recognise yourself in, but at the same time don’t?