Self Portrait with Texture

I’m struggling to pin down when this was produced. It was painted using as its reference a Polaroid picture (which I still have) circa 1998/9. I barely remember making this. By the look of it, there was originally a highly textured abstract piece on the board, which presumably I didn’t like. Or perhaps I just ran out of surfaces to deface and decided to arbitrarily recycle. You’ll have to build a time machine and go ask younger me. I find the haphazard blobs of texture and bits of colour from the original work poking through a little disturbing, which of course also means I find them very satisfying. This isn’t a particularly flattering likeness (the Polaroid doesn’t exactly make me look like Brad Pitt either) but I think this choice of image and depiction says something of the slightly distorted and unflattering view I have of my physical appearance. I’m certain this distortion was less apparent in my early 20s, but years of psychological cruelty through my school year about my looks (and intelligence) have left me with a scar tissue over my self-appraising mind’s eye, something that is also very common among those with ADHD. I’m capable of appreciating that I’m a reasonably good looking guy (at least by the standards set by modern society) yet I cannot feel it. The fact that I was likely a perfectly decent-looking kid, yet still was considered a geeky mess (to my recollection), speaks more to how a carried myself – awkward, inward, grumpy, untouchable and odd – than my actual physical appearance. But then, perhaps my memory of events of those years is distorted, and it is only me who ever viewed myself in that way.