Anything can happen in the self-portraits, things that shouldn’t see the light of day. Yet countless images do not make it past the strict assessment committee – with the painter as the sole arbiter. (Self-criticism is the blunt buffer between the studio and the outside world.) Even if the painting consists of an accumulation of errors, the result must still ‘add up’. This ‘adding up’ may be taken literally: certain images ‘vibrate’, or ‘live’, others do not. Beauty can be the result of many imperfections, but it is not active in every image.

The Tray Portraits can therefore be seen as a kind of by-product. In the past, a rejected work would have ended up in the bin. Not this time – out of a kind of ‘recovered self-respect’. “I can hardly throw myself away, can I?” Though perhaps it is just as disrespectful to use your supposed likeness as a coaster or tray for all sorts of objects. A fine contradiction in terminis. But above all, a masking operation.

These ‘things’ are sometimes random items lying around the studio, but they can just as easily be acquired objects that carry the scent of another person or a memory. Sometimes, the object also alludes to the act of painting or painting as an art form. The things seek their rightful place at a sore point in the portrait: the place where the paint or the image does not work. Their presence obscures things. Right there, where they weigh ‘on her’. (Occasionally with a shadow, but usually without).

The Tray Portraits force you, as the viewer, to take a perspective. The face wants your gaze to be at eye level, you relate to the work ‘face-to-face’. The objects lie or stand upon the canvas and come into their own if you take a bird’s eye view. One painting – two points of view.

And while the self-portraits parade their incompetence, these works allow the painter to show that she can do something after all: to paint a trompe-l’oeil.