Selvportræt 1912

Poul S. Christiansen made this self-portrait in oil paint, but it's hard to know when. It’s all in grayscale, so you can really focus on the forms and values. It’s as if he’s trying to paint an honest picture of himself. There’s something really captivating about the way he’s rendered the texture of his face, using short, choppy strokes to define his features, the brush almost prodding at the canvas. You can see every little mark. It’s not about perfect smoothness, it’s about capturing something real. And look at that palette he’s holding. It's got all those messy splodges of mixed paint, like a record of his own process. It's not pristine, it's been used. It tells you this guy spends a lot of time making art. It reminds me a little of Courbet and his own down-to-earth approach to painting the everyday. It’s about the act of painting itself, and the beauty in the messy reality of being an artist.