A reflection says more than a thousand words.
This series of works was completed in the artist’s final year of university. In these self-portraits, the artist represents herself as two separate alter egos. These personas are based on the Red and White Queens from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass: And What Alice Found There’. They represent duality or inner conflict – conflicts of love and hate, of spiritual and material, of needs and wants, which we all experience. This investigation of the self is an exorcism through the reopening and healing of old wounds.
One of the tools of exorcism is a mirror – a looking glass, if you will. Thus, the act of painting a self-portrait becomes ritualistic and allows the past to finally be left behind in the layers of paint. The Surrealists, particularly Frida Kahlo, had similar concepts, and like her, the artist says, “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
Gizela Trzmiel Art 