June 2022: The Selfie
![June 2022: The Selfie](/content/images/size/w2000/2022/06/IMG_9324-1.jpg)
Every June I paint a self-portrait for my birthday. It's a way to spend time with myself, notice how I'm changing, and knit that together with how I'm evolving as an artist, making it into a physical thing that, too, will begin to age. Now I have a little collection.
Here's an early one. I made this with India ink and a paintbrush in a cheap drawing sketchbook in 2016.
![](https://www.easydoesitart.com/content/images/2022/06/JPEG-image-4993BA05F953-1.jpeg)
Drawing myself is big part of my practice, and goes well beyond the birthday thing. When I was first learning to make portraits, I imagined someone else's face as The Human Face, the one I needed to learn to draw if I wanted to draw "a person." There's an awful lot to unpack there, but it's not hard to imagine where I got this idea: it doesn't matter if we look to healthcare legislation & pay disparities or youtube drawing tutorials & the icons of art history, the idea of A Person is not me.
![](https://www.easydoesitart.com/content/images/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-07-at-9.04.36-PM.png)