Provenance / A Self Portrait

Finding a voice

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Provenance is the place of origin or earliest known history of something; it is a record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality.

For my self portrait, I decided to explore the metaphor of the family tree. The biggest challenge for me was the strike the balance between expression and information. The information is organized by time (increasing upward and downward from the ground level), and by magnitude of influence (spreading outward on both sides).

The portrait shows a timeline of influences in my life that stems out from thicker branches of context. The green stems refer to my education while brown shows my professional influences. Finally the roots (what else) are my family members.

Along with each leaf of influence, there are descriptions and tags that are represented in different colors, showing the cross pollination (if you will) and bridging of influences between my three cores. I have never wanted to be an artist, but in this self portrait, I was given the chance to explore, express, and play.

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