I pawed through some archives and managed to fill the collage out a bit more.  I’ve added years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2004.  In addition, I’ve added the year to each image to make it a bit more viewer friendly.  Some of these are not “actual” self portraits…in that, they may have been done for a strip or an illustration… but the evolution still holds.

To me, these images are more telling than photos.  Sure, a photo can convey some emotion, but a photo can’t tell me about line.  For example: 1999.  The lines used on that portrait are pretty uniform.  There is some hatching in the hair and beard but for the most part the lines are tentative.  There is nothing that I was sure about in drawing that.  In fact, maybe by not getting into detail, I was hiding something.  What that something may have been isn’t too clear.

2000 finds me confused.  Am I supposed to be doing this?

2001 makes it seem as though I was happy… if only for a brief moment.  I’m not absolutely certain of when in 2001 this was drawn, but it’s a same bet to assume it was before September.

Between 2005 and 2008 and possibly into 2009 I’m trying to figure out who I was not only as a person but as an artist.  Am I supposed to be a cartoonist or so I want to be a “fine artist”?  This was the period where I was living in a tight rope… my marriage was starting and ending, life changed for me… grad school and a new life.  New life means a new face and int he process, trying to figure out what the old face was.

By 2010, with an MFA on my wall, I had myself all figured out.  Sort of.

Wonder what the next 20 will look like.

I will try and fill the gaps in this collage as I find them.  1993, 1996-1998 and 2002.