In the Desert

I started this self-portrait in 2018 and finished over three years later. Back then this seemed like a very long time. It doesn't feel so long now.

This is one of the largest pieces I've ever done, maybe two by three feet, and the stippling required to fill these spaces was very time-consuming. The sections serve as a ledger chronicling my increased experience with stippling. At the beginning I used a 0.45mm pen, but by the end I was using a .2mm. The corresponding difference in dot size and the subtlety of shading is striking when I look at the piece now.

By the end of 2019 I had cut off all of my hair, but here it's preserved forever. Looking at it dredges up the same feeling in me as looking at the pictures of my younger self at my parents' house: I should know that person. I should know her more intimately than I know anyone else, but she is a stranger to me.

This piece was inspired by the Stephen Crane poem of the same name. Crane died at the age of twenty-eight, in 1900. I am older now than he ever was. Somehow this makes me feel both old and very young.