FIRST PORTRAIT
For sorre forgotten reason, the
hair of my first portrait was most
important. Eyelashes take up as
much of my attention as the head
itself. I now think this is a picture of
proximity, reflecting my experience
of looking closely at my father's
face. Even though it is made by
a toddler this image would be
recognizable to anyone.On a particular afternoon in September 1974, at age two-and-
a-half, I was sitting with my mother. She gave me a notepad
and a red crayon and asked me to draw her "a picture of
Daddy." Until this day, I, like all toddlers, had happily
scribbled, enjoying the physical sensation of crayon on paper,
and the appearance of my strikes of colors, but I had never
yet attempted to figuratively picture my world. The image
above is what I gave back to my mother, and she kept it as
my first step beyond the delighted realms of scrawl.
MAKING OUR MARK
It seems reasonable to assume that we have engaged
in pictorial mark-making for as long as we have made
conscious use of our hands. In cave paintings like the
one opposite, we see our oldest surviving images, created
by societies of hunter-gatherers, who in their day-to-day
hardship made time to picture themselves and the animals
on which they depended. Cave art was not made for
decoration but as a fundamental part of life, an expression
of existence, power, and belonging to place.
WHERE
WE
BEGIN