Works On Paper > Self Portraits

self portrait by Steve Veatch
Colored Pencil Self Portrait
Colored pencil, sumi, egg tempera, crayon on museum board mounted on cradled panel
20 x 16`
2014

Oh, don't I look dark. Brooding, ruminating, gestating. I look into the mirror. I think: I've seen this ten million thousand times. And I think: there are so many in the world today I've not seen and never will. For me, the vast permutations among people are fascinating. How does one's face shape one's thoughts? How also the faces of others?

Certain types among humanity can be discerned and described, but even within these types there are always variations extending from these bases. Anthropologists had, and may still use, three part body classifications of ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph. I am a mesomorph with endomorphic notes, to use wine tasting taxonomy.

There seems enough literature online and in books about this to ask if these classifications are empirical, and not ideological. If true, the physical story plays upon these three platforms in part, but within the platforms, a seemingly infinite variety.

The variety among the species is astounding and almost everyday I see people I've never seen before. My interest first is on faces and bodies secondly. The only other equal in variety I've seen is among domesticated animals, but that is almost certainly not all true. However, maybe the simpler in sophistication the animal and perhaps plant kingdoms go, the less variety and the more uniform. Viruses, bacteria and protozoans likely have little use for such difference.

The gods may have granted me a doppelgänger. The system works like this: With my sense of persecution gripped in one hand, and the elation of my uniqueness and worth in the other, I fear my doppelgänger is credited for all the good I do, and I am debited, so to speak, with all the bad he does.

It's a zero sum game. There is nothing in the universe which in giving with one hand, does not take with the other. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.

Body types are of little help under this regime.