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"Self Portrait as a Vermeer" (2021) is derived from an actual master copy painting (Self Portrait as a Vermeer, oil on linen, 1998) that I completed during graduate school. I studied with a master professor in Renaissance techniques at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who taught me how to replicate Vermeer's exact painting techniques — preparing and stretching the linen over supports, sealing the canvas with rabbit skin glue, mixing gesso from scratch, and blending and applying the oil paints with a "glazing" technique to achieve depth and realism. I spent nearly a year creating this oil on linen master copy, using as my guide a printout of a photo I'd taken of the original artwork at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, The Netherlands, where I was fortunate to have viewed the actual painting in person.

In the last stages of creating this master copy, I kept having to paint and re-paint the eyes, as I kept getting them wrong. Then a fellow artist pointed out to me they observed I seemed to be painting and repainting my own almond-shaped eyes in the artwork. I realized I was subconsciously creating a self-portrait, so the eyes as I had painted them remained in the work.

In 2021, I created this new work, a video installation in a gilt frame, by depicting Vermeer's original Girl With A Pearl Earring artwork slowly evolving into my Self Portrait as a Vermeer and then back again.

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