When I was in middle and high school, I had an almost perverse artistic vanity, seeking to represent myself figuratively in the most unflattering light.
Having turned up my nose long ago at idealized, Barbie-like portraiture (Insipid! Uninteresting!), I veered wildly into the other extreme, taking an almost masochistic pleasure in making myself look grotesque as possible.
I did these charcoal sketches over a series of days in the back of a blank notebook I was planning to use as my valedictory 8th grade yearbook. I secretly hoped people might stumble upon them as they looked for an empty page on which to write.
While I now recognize this streak for what is was -- an operatic flourish, rebellion for rebellion's sake, reverse snobbism, with a heady whip of pretension thrown into the mix, looking back, I'm still glad I chose this (ultimately harmless) path over the another. My 8th grade self and I could agree on this: it made for some interesting images.
