"Self- Portrait" – A Study of the 'Self':

3.1 Why a Painting of a Self - Portrait – Why I
On the axis of the "self" I am the artist/researcher who continuously paints a self - portrait. I started the
above discussion by presenting some of the greatest artists who are identified as those who painted self
- portraits. I have chosen to present them as background and basis of the investigated phenomenon. I
do not intend in this research to compare myself with these giants, or to place myself as an equal. They
were presented as a model of the phenomenon and through them I wished to describe some of the
outstanding characteristics of the phenomenon. As an active painter who works in this genre, I embody
in a practical and real manner the phenomenon that has been defined here as human behaviour. This
enabled me to establish and form a research situation and define it as a case-study.
In her article Auto/biography as Performative PhD Thesis, Sally Berridge (2008) describes her research.
She investigates and creates an autobiography while being occupied with memories and creating an
identity. Her research is carried out as a work of art. She defines her overall investigative work as
bricolage and presents a visual object that she defines as an 'Artist - Book' (Livre d'artiste) as the
dominant part of her doctoral thesis. In her article Art- based research and creative PhD (2007) she
presents herself as a researcher and artist and explains that though she presents a work of art as a
researched work for her doctoral thesis, she does not consider it as 'great art' "but as the 'ordinary'
generic art that has not yet been 'discovered', but may be explored in a creative doctorate"(ibid.).
I join her statements and wish to point out that I do not place my portraits in the honoured pantheon of
the masters as an artistic phenomenon, but closely examine the phenomenon which I have defined as
human behaviour as a research case. In other words, in this research and via this phenomenon I wish
to push both forward and onward the borders of the investigation of the 'self', the possibilities and
processes of this research.
From both the phenomenon and its products (the paintings) reverberates the subject's question of 'who
am I?', and demonstrates obedience to the Socratic statement 'know thyself'. Repeating this action
again and again points to the fact that the question is disturbing, and raises the assumption that
perhaps the answer is the actual preoccupation with the question. To ask and to paint, and again to ask
and to paint. I can identify a closed circle here. Every time the question arises and disturbs, the painter
creates a painting, receives an answer, the answer does not satisfy him and then he returns and paints.
It is a closed circle which here, with the help of qualitative research tools, I wish to open.
Winnicott (1971) explains that the soul leads us astray and plays hide-and-seek with us. On the one
hand, it strives to be seen, and on the other hand it hides. He is of the opinion that the artist's work
demonstrates and expresses this. The artist bares and exposes via the painting, while at the same time
he hides inside the painting. In other words, the painting and the language of the painting are able to
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