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plpietra 's review for:
The Mirror and the Palette
by Jennifer Higgie
She paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available. (This is putting it mildly.) She's been barred from so many other places, so many other bodies. Sometimes, she's unclear about why and who she's painting her picture for. (Does anyone really know what a painting is for?) All she knows is that something compels her to look at herself for hours on end, for reasons that have nothing to do with vanity – quite the opposite. What draws her back to her reflection again and again is the raw self-scrutiny that stems from unknowing; from the confusion she's experienced between the reality of living in her body and the lies that she's been told about it that have been drummed into her since the moment she arrived on earth. She looks at herself in order to study what she's made of, to understand herself anew and, from time to time, to rage against the very thing that confines and defines her. She paints herself to develop her skills, to converse with her contemporaries and with art history. In the act of painting herself she makes clear that she is someone worth looking at, someone worth acknowledging. Her paintings assume shapes that she does not always predict. Against all odds, she discovers what she is capable of.