Self-Portrait (No.18) 1983

Ivan Albright made this self-portrait with colored pencil in 1983. It's late in his life, and you can see it in the lines around his eyes and mouth. The colors are pale, like faded memories. I imagine him sitting in front of a mirror, studying his reflection. The yellow vertical lines in the background make me think about light, about time passing. There's something very raw about the way he's rendered his own face, almost like he's trying to capture not just what he looks like but what it feels like to be him, right then. The red around his nose and mouth and the blue under his eyes, that's about getting old. Artists, we look at the world, and we look at each other, and we try to make sense of it all with marks and colors. It's a conversation that never ends, a way of reaching out and saying, "I see you, I feel you, I'm here too."