Self Portrait 2018

Jammie Holmes made this raw self-portrait with paint and pastel. Look at how the colors smear and bleed into each other, it’s a kind of messy process, right? Like the art is still in the act of becoming. There’s a real physicality to how Holmes lays down these marks. You can see the texture of the pastel, the way it scratches across the surface, and the paint seems almost translucent in places, like a stain. It feels so immediate, like he’s trying to get something down quickly, but also really deeply felt. Those eyes, surrounded by red, feel like they’ve seen too much. And then there’s that crown of thorns, or whatever that yellow scribble around the head is supposed to be. It's like a halo, but a really messed up one. Thinking about other artists who deal with the self in similarly confrontational ways, someone like Jean-Michel Basquiat comes to mind. It's all about laying bare the soul, and embracing the messy, unresolved aspects of being human.