My Self-Portrait | Sky Portrait Artist of the Year 2025
- Chloe Barnes
- Oct 17
- 3 min read
In my first post discussing the application to Portrait Artist of the Year 2025, I mentioned that I wanted to dedicate a separate entry to talk about the self-portrait I created and submitted for this year's competition.
I've spent many years developing my practice, thinking about how and why I work as a creative and individual and what this means for my art. I am a process lead person and during the last 10+ years, I've trialled different mediums and styles - from digital cartoony illustrations to traditional oil painting. But time and time again, I returned to and fell in love with monoprinting.
Over the years, I have made many self-portraits from a mirror. I make them during times when I feel lost, at an emotional point in my life or struggling a bit with my mental health; the process is cathartic and therapeutic, and it is a way to reconnect with my practice and ground myself through times of uncertainty. I do receive comments from friends about how these portraits differ from my typical "smiley" exterior... but through each self-portrait I paint and print, I can see, reflect and learn something new about myself.
This leads me to my submitted self-portrait, titled 'In the Days That Followed' and made in June 2024. Hinted by the title, I created this portrait days following the end of a long-term relationship. Out of respect for that relationship and holding care for this person, I'm not going into details. But I will say that he is also an amazing artist in his own right, and knowing that emotion holds so much power in my work, he suggested that I produce a series of self-portraits and portraits of him from life to document the break-up. With the need for space to heal, I only created three portraits, but I am still immensely grateful to him and our time together.
Painted sketch and the final painted plate for my self-portrait
The final self-portrait I made channels feelings surrounding a loss of identity, sadness and grief. I use a lot of prussian blue in my work - to me, it is an emotional colour with a broad range of tonal values - and for the context of this portrait, it felt like the right colour to use. Just looking at the timestamp of my photos, I painted my plate within 3 hours before printing. The time frame in which I work, coupled with my mark-making tools and the potential for unpredictable distortion, helps me to express (rather than define) emotions.
After the plate was printed, I used a bit of black chalk on top of the monotype to emphasise certain lines and features. In this case, it added a bit of subtle depth to the image and allowed me to pull focus on certain features of my face, particularly the eyes.
At the end of February, I was in the gym with a couple of my housemates when I received a call that I had been selected to take part in this year's PAOTY competition. It was fair to say that waves of excitement, realisation, and apprehension hit me like a ton of bricks... it did make for a buzzing remainder of my workout, so I couldn't complain. It turned out that I had about a month to prepare before my heats kicked off in April, which is airing on the 22nd October at 8 pm GMT. Make sure you subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date with my account of the experience!
As a final note, this self-portrait means a lot to me. Whilst it marked the end of a relationship and the heavy emotions surrounding it, it also represented the beginning of a new chapter in my life as I joined a house share with the most amazing group of people and friends. And now, it's also symbolic of this crazy opportunity.
