I have not done a self-portrait since college, when my professor, Fr Sullivan, was unimpressed with my first attempt. He was right; it kinda sucked.
But when I saw a self portrait project at Jerry's Artarama this week, I decided to try another analog selfie, this one a mixed media torn paper collage.
It's immersed in T S Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, a poem I memorized 50 years ago. As I enter my sunset years, its themes resonate; its words still spill from my lips with regularity. I marvel at how well it speaks to middle age and self-doubt. Years from now I will be padding the halls of a rest home asking if I am measuring my life in coffee spoons.
Amazingly, Eliot was only 21 years old when he started writing Prufrock, the completion of which took several years. It's a stunning achievement when I consider where my head and approach to writing was when I was 21.
In 1995, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was voted Britain’s 26th favorite poem of all time. Even so, when the first 500 copies of T. S. Eliot’s 1917 debut volume Prufrock and Other Observations were printed, the final copy would not be sold until 1922
Don't worry; I'm not gonna quit my day job, channel Kahlo and focus on self portraits. But I enjoyed the diversion, mixing it up.