One of the comments I hear most often is that my embroidered self-portraits look too sad, too angry, too distorted—or simply not beautiful.
I understand this reaction. We have become accustomed to portraits that reassure us, that smooth away uncertainty, that celebrate an ideal version of the self. We expect a face to be pleasing before it is truthful.
My work follows a different path.
I am not interested in beauty as perfection. I am interested in presence.
An embroidered portrait is built slowly, stitch after stitch. Every thread records hesitation, repetition, vulnerability, and time. The face that finally appears is not a mirror of physical appearance but a map of lived experience. It carries emotions that often remain invisible in everyday life.
Expression matters more to me than likeness.
I have long admired the portraits of Francis Bacon, not because of their dramatic distortions, but because they refuse to separate the body from feeling. They remind us that a face is never fixed. It is constantly shaped by memory, tension, desire, fear, tenderness, and change. My own work does not seek the same visual language, yet I share the belief that a portrait should reveal more than anatomy.
Embroidery itself changes the way a face exists. Thread resists precision. It softens, interrupts, and transforms contours. Every stitch becomes both a mark and a question. The image remains open, incomplete, alive.
If my self-portraits appear melancholic, it is not because they celebrate sadness. They acknowledge that human experience includes fragility as well as strength. If they seem imperfect, it is because I believe imperfection is one of the most honest forms of beauty.
Art does not have the responsibility to flatter.
It has the possibility of making us look longer, look deeper, and perhaps recognise something of ourselves that polished images rarely allow us to see.
For me, a self-portrait is not an image of who I am.
It is a conversation with who I am becoming.
