Final Artist Statement - Amy Sullivan

Final Project Artist’s Statement: Monster Selfies

As I approached the final project, I knew that I wanted to do something with the huge collection of selfies that I have on my cell phone. Self-portraits interest me; I think the topic of self-representation is really interesting, and I’ve certainly played with the way I present myself, both in real life and online.

However, simply copying a selfie didn’t seem interesting enough or conceptually sophisticated enough. A picture I had taken of myself last year provided the inspiration for the final form of my project: this was a selfie taken on a day when a makeup artist friend had painted me blue. I decided that I would create a triptych of images based on selfies from different periods in my life, each representing me as a different monster or creature. I decided what monster to draw myself as depending on what feelings the picture evoked, and I ended up with portaits of myself as a hipster vampire, a sad ghost, and a peppy blue oni (a creature from Japanese mythology).

The materials I used were also determined by the mood of the images. For the highly saturated, cheerful oni image, I used oil pastels on drawing paper (unfortunately I cannot remember what brand). The vampire and ghost were both done on Arches watercolor paper; the vampire image consists of Micron pen, India ink, watercolor, and white Conte crayon, while the ghost image is India ink with minimal amounts of watercolor. In order to copy my selfies, I used the grid technique, and then added important monster details: a lone tree for the ghost, a Starbucks blood drink for the vampire, and horns, a third eye, and a wild mane for the oni.

I could claim that my project is intended to have a deep meaning about the monstrosity inherent in all humans, but that’s definitely not the rationale behind it—I simply wanted to take an aspect of modern culture and use it to put a humorous spin on frightening creatures. Additionally, I enjoyed the challenge of creating realistic, highly referenced images and then adding features to them from my imagination—seamlessly fusing the reference photos and my invented details was interesting and challenging.

If I were to expand or alter this project in any way, I would probably continue the series. I can think of some things I would do to improve each of the three images I already have, too, but I’m most excited about the prospect of continuing this concept. There’s a lot more selfies where these came from.