Self Portrait Quotes - Page 3

• Painting has always been a means of self-expression for me. Therefore, I paint because I have to and need to, not necessarily because I want to. Subconsciously or not, the figures I paint are a reflection of myself and whatever mood I am in at the time, so every painting is in essence a self-portrait.

  Lori Earley

  Mean, Reflection, Self

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• I've heard many times that with all good artists it's ultimately a self-portrait even if it's an abstraction. I feel my work is very much who I am. I didn't try to make it that way; it just is. It reflects who I am and also my interests.

  Joyce Tenneson

  Photography, Artist, Self

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• Taking photographs is generally an act of 'looking at the object, whereas 'being seen' or 'showing' is what is most interest to one who does a self-portrait...self-portraits deny not only photography itself but the 20th century as an era as well...an inevitable phenomenon at the end of the 20th century.

  Yasumasa Morimura

  Photography, Self, Doe

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• There are ways of angling the camera. I don't just use a tripod. The only time I did that was in '88 when I first came out of detox, I spent every day doing self-portraits to fit back into my own skin. I didn't know what the world looked like - what I looked like - so in order to fit back into myself, I took self-portraits everyday to give myself courage and to fit the pieces back together. I used a tripod then.

  Nan Goldin

  Self, Order, Giving

  Source: foggysapphires.wordpress.com

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• Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Art, Book, Hero

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• Painting self-portraits without clothes on has also given me some publicity.

  Cleo Moore

  Self, Clothes, Portraits

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• I've had a reoccurring dream about hanging out with Britney Spears, so maybe it would be fun to chill with her for a bit? Like, see what makes her tick. I had this dream once about Britney, that we were going to get married or something, and so I had to meet her parents but we were stuck on a beach in these sand dunes - and at this point between the dreams and self-portrait, you know way too much about me.

  Gabriel Mann

  Dream, Beach, Fun

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• In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.

  Kehinde Wiley

  Mean, Thinking, Self

  "'I try to create a place of disorientation' - interview with Kehinde Wiley". Interview With Anna Savitskaya, artdependence.com. February 16, 2015.

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• Along with some of the worst music of Bob Dylan's career ("Self-Portrait," 1970), this period produced some gems - including many songs recorded with The Band in '67 but not released until years later.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Self, Years

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Chess hasn't really influenced my literature. It's true, there's a character in Pigeon Post, an old chess player; but it's more of a wink, a self-portrait and not much more.

  Dumitru Tepeneag

  Character, Player, Self

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Many of Bonnard's later paintings are shot through with a powerful sense of morbidity. The self-portraits he painted after catching sight of himself in the various mirrors in the house - the mirror in the bathroom or the mirror in his bedroom, still lit from above by a single accusatory light bulb - are almost appallingly raw.

  Andrew Graham-Dixon

  Powerful, Self, Mirrors

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• I have read all of Daniel Aaron's books, and admired them, but in The Americanist I believe he has composed an intellectual and social memoir for which he will be remembered. His self-portrait is marked by personal tact and admirable restraint: he is and is not its subject. The Americanist is a vision of otherness: literary and academic friends and acquaintances, here and abroad. Eloquently phrased and free of nostalgia, it catches a lost world that yet engendered much of our own.

  Harold Bloom

  Believe, Book, Self

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• I felt that the beach portraits were all self-portraits. That moment of unease, that attempt to find a pose, it was all about me.

  Rineke Dijkstra

  Beach, Self, Portraits

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• We all stood and gathered our backpacks and I looked at the floor around my chair to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything. I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a scrap of paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed, that I did not even keep a diary or write letters except bland, earnest, falsely cheerful ones to my family (We lost to St. Francis in soccer, but I think we’ll win our game this Saturday; we are working on self-portraits in art class, and the hardest part for me is the nose) never decreased my fear.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Soccer, Art, Writing

  Curtis Sittenfeld (2005). “Prep: a novel”

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• I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me, but the chemistry is incredibly simple and very destructive. When we first met, you told me that a disguise is always a self portrait, how true of you, the combination to your safe – your measurements. But this is far more intimate. This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head. You could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you worked for. But you just couldn’t resist it, could you? I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.

  Mark Gatiss

  Heart, Thinking, Simple

  "Sherlock (TV Series) - A Scandal in Belgravia". www.imdb.com. 2012.

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• The humor for me is how far above your head the signature is - it's dislocated from the sign of the artist in such a distinct way that it could almost be a self-portrait of a sort.

  Laura Owens

  Artist, Self, Signatures

  Interview with Rachel Kushner, www.believermag.com. May 2003.

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• I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

  Samuel Johnson

  Dog, Pain, Portraits

  Quoted in Mrs Piozzi Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).

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