Self Portraits of Ageing

 " Love means to learn to look at yourself 

The way one looks at distant things,

For you are only one thing among many,

And whoever sees that way, heals his heart,

without knowing it, from various ills."

Czeslaw Milosz

I was a late bloomer; at 13 I looked 11,

a mighty cross to bear, and so it went throughout

the self consciousness of adolescence

 into young adulthood.Eventually, 

I blended in with my peers, kept up the fashions

and times and took for granted

the buoyancy of youth.

 But then it turns out that 

aging is effortless as well as inevitable.

 It happens to everybody. 

Taking self portrait photos and then altering them with my art

has helped me to see myself and to learn to accept the truths

of ageing with its sagging jowls, its wrinkles and wattles.

" Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. 

Face it!" Joseph Conrad

Don't trace out your profile-

forget your side view- 

all that is outer stuff. Look for your other half

who walks always next to you and tends to be 

who you arn't. Antonio Machado


Every painter paints himself.
                    Cosimo deMedici

Listen to the crone when she appears. Her wisdom will compensate

for the loss of interest in style and fads. 

She will turn your head to nature and the circular movement

of time. She will look serious, but will offer laughter

as a cure for every apostasy.

"There are only two styles of portraits:

the serious and the smirk." Charles Dickens

"A portrait  affirms; it gives the gift of self to its subject.

It says  "yes, you are worth spending this time

over, your story deserves to be told,

you should be recorded for you

will not pass this way again."

               David Goatley