Joseph Gomez

Ms. Herrera

Photo

22 March 2017
Artist Statement

For our photography class we did a project named the Surrealist Self Portrait,

which is a carving of your face of a piece of linoleum that is glued to a piece of wood.

This project is essentially a print of your face, which is used to put ink on and to stamp on

a piece of paper. To create this project you first take a picture of your face then you print

out the image on plastic and carve out the negative space to create your stencil. Next, you

spray paint the stencil onto the linoleum and finally you carve your self-portrait to make

your stamp. The purpose of the Surrealist Self Portrait was to use symbolism in your

stamp to express who you are and your characteristics, personality. We used surrealism to

reflect character traits of ours that represented our identity; even our facial expressions

represented a part of our identity.

In my self-portrait I used three symbols to each represent a character trait and

used a facial expression as another form of symbolism. The three symbols I used were

ants, which are a type of form and shape, a brain that is a form and texture, and a yolk as

the sun with eggshells on either side, a shape. The ants are a symbol representing that I

am a hard working person and that I am tough, the brain represents that I am smart,

intelligent and a great student. The egg as the sun is very unique symbol it demonstrates

that I am weird and random because the egg as the sun is very strange and random. The

brain is not a common symbol for intelligence yet it directly came to me as a powerful

sign of intelligence and my culture the ants in my culture are animals that are strong and
hard working like Ant-Man. Ants are also seen as animals that are responsible because

they gather food ahead of time for the winter, the egg as a brain was a reference from a

painting by Salvador Dali who was a surrealist and a very strange man he was my

inspiration of weird.

I created this self-portrait to show people my identity using symbols in a surrealist

manner that represented my different traits. Using the ant, brain and egg/sun I described

myself in an unordinary way the history of this whole project has been my whole life up

until now. I want my art to go around the world for people of all culture and ethnicity to

see and know in a sense the life of a kid that no one knew to make an impact in their

lives. Id like to express myself somewhat how Frida Kahlo did in the way that no one

really knew her she was just living a terrible life in the shadows showing it through her

art and after years of sacrifice to finally get your story told for all the world to hear. I

expect for people to analyze my life and see how hard it was yet be completely worth it

and be motivated to make a difference or be successful. This self-portrait would fit into

the surrealism movement in history, which incorporated symbols into drawings that

represented something. I used symbols as a form of surrealism to express my identity

such as the drawing of Frida Kahlo as a deer being hunted because her life was under

attack. My self-portrait is like Rene Magrittes drawing of himself with an apple covering

his face because people just see a man in a suit but hes more than that people just dont

look deeper and the same thing goes for me. In this project I can relate to Vik Muniz

because I used a very unique material to make my art just like Muniz used trash to create

his art. Salvador Dalis work was very strange but yet very deep and it can relate to mine

because my painting is unique and deep.

 In conclusion, this self-portrait project was to express your identity in unique

ways using symbolism and surrealism. Another artist who influenced me was Pablo

Picasso because he drew everything in the way he saw it which was different from

everyone else he drew very deformed and misshaped objects. Through this project, I can

show who I am with the help of other artists and cultural influences. I used ants, a brain,

and an egg/sun to demonstrate who I am each with its own meaning.