Self Portrait in Black

A portrait of me, looking very serious, very questioning. Which, I suppose, is what you do when you paint. Look, think, question, do. But never twice in the same order!

When I painted this, several painters kept surfacing in my thoughts. Of course, Rembrandt was big in my mind, since he is the king of the self-portrait, and portraiture in general. Guys like Freud and Bacon crept in through the back door. Also Brett Whiteley, my favorite Aussie painter of all time. The floating hand . . .

But Goya's black I found to be overwhelming, the more I looked at his work. It's so rich and dense and frightening at the same time.