Paintings and Etchings by Lisa Wood

Twin Reflection Self Portraits

“In my artistic practice, repeatedly, obsessively, I return to depicting myself.  In the Twin Reflection series, consisting of large and intimate scale paintings and an intaglio print series, I have reduced self portraiture to include only my face – blown up, cropped, and repeated.  I use self portraiture to depict the things I feel and think that are totally private, a secret inner dialogue that is often taken for granted.  I am interested in the intersection between this inner space and the shared public exterior space – how one affects the perception of the other.

The Twin Reflection series explores the idea of the double, manifested as myself and myself reflected in the mirror.  I am interested in the idea of multiple selves that exist simultaneously.  In the work I am confronting myself, bullying myself, seducing myself, and consoling myself.  I am revealing a private performance that speaks to desire and comfort on one side, and anxiety and compulsion on the other, manifested in continual self scrutiny, analysis or monitoring.

Working with intaglio, through Manitoba Print Makers Association, enabled me to push the idea of multiplicity in the Twin Reflection series further by using the inherent repetition of printmaking.  To complete this series I etched four copper plates depicting different versions of my face doubled in the mirror, and used them as puzzle pieces to create four large prints, each print with a different combination of plates, or sections of plates.  The four prints seen together create an ongoing, unfolding chain of faces, a hall of mirrors that reveals a changing dynamic between the figures.  With obsessive repetition both the image and the content break down.”

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