Self Portrait with Two Failed Projects Painting

Using the studio setup for the clothes project, I wrapped myself in two failed projects. One is a 270 sonobo unit origami polygon, the other is a crochet blanket done using systematic combinations of colour juxtapositions. Both failed: the origami ball couldn't hold its own weights, the blanket was meant to be shown with schematic tabular representation of the colour combination used which I had kept track of with colour pencils on a large sheet of paper. My dog ate the paper. The idea for the work came from the despairing moment when I completed the polygon and realised it wouldn’t hold its shape. I felt like burying my head in it. The failure lead to playful musings as to what could happen next with this object which was still enticing. And so I wrapped myself in two failures, cocooned myself in systematic colour and felt very complete. The multitude of colours in my work often come about through an effort to use ‘one of each’, a democratic approach to colour whether it be in the form of tubes of acrylic, origami paper, or wool. One third of the way through a large project which will involve thousands of more classical self portraits, I prefer this one without my face. The work exists as simple photographic prints, as collages onto which I have layered other failures and now as a painting, because I am a painter, after all.