Self-Portrait 1987

This is Nelson Shanks' self-portrait in oils on canvas, and what grabs me right away is the feeling he has conjured from the colors, which are rich and deep but somehow also restrained. Look how the texture isn't trying to hide anything: it’s all about the materiality of the paint, not smooth or blended, but letting the marks remain visible. Especially in his jacket, where you can see the strokes blending into each other, a little like brushstrokes in a van Gogh. The mood is contemplative, intimate. But there's something unsettling, too, in the way that his gaze is sort of defiant. It reminds me of some of Lucian Freud's self-portraits, but perhaps with a little more humanity.