Self Portrait with Tufted Titmouse

Frida Your Mind Series

From Jessica Concepcion’s talk on the series:
”The idea behind the series came from thinking of the title, to be quite honest. I love a play on words. I’ve always admired Frida Kahlo’s paintings and wanted to try my hand at that type of self-portrait. Kahlo’s paintings were not just a self-portrait for the sake of capturing an image. It’s loaded with symbology and at the time it was thought of as surreal. Frida once referred to the supposed surrealism and said (paraphrasing), “That’s what people see. I’m painting my reality.” 

You might just see realism or a representative style when you look at my work, but most of the time there is a lot of symbology at play. In this series, the symbology is within the animals chosen and the expression used in each painting. For example, the tufted titmouse in the largest of the paintings is sitting on my “imagined” shoulder (the shoulder is not painted into the scene) and dropping feathers. The totem meaning of the titmouse is “the keeper of knowledge”. In my painting, he is with me but looking away from the viewer while I am making direct eye contact. The painting is conveying the search for truth and knowledge but not always being able to face it and accept it.”

Original painting is available.

Self Portrait with Tufted Titmouse | 36 x 36 in. | Oil on canvas