About
Kaleidoscopic Portraits
2022—Present
Doppelganger 01
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches
2022

An idealized sitter. An immutable pose.

For centuries, the classic portrait was an exercise in perfection-seeking, a study in singularity. And a zero sum game.

Which a person is not.

In his landmark 1890 book, The Principles of Psychology, William James, offered a different (and prescient) perspective.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him, and carry an image of him in their mind.  

Kaleidoscopic portraits is based on this idea, each face explored as a shifting landscape of time, space, and sentiment. Each likeness is imagined with multiple layers, across shifting lenses, and examined through experiments with light and shadow, pixels and pigment. Revealing friction, tension, and subtle hints of movement, these dynamic glimpses of our “social selves” focus more on the person than the pose. Neither are immutable. All are in flux.

Kaleidoscopic Portraits