As a child I was afraid of mirrors. I used to believe that someone could lean out, grab me and drag me into that familiar, uncanny world, which surely took horrific turns just around the corners of what was visible.
Seeing myself in that mirror world is like looking at an identical twin, who mockingly stares back at me, aping my expressions, undeceived by the front I put up.
When I paint myself I am wrenching this twin out of the mirror and forcing her into the padded cell of my image. As the author John Banville has said, “Art is a kind of vengeance.” It’s an attempt to fix the unfixable, and like revenge, it gives us the delusion of control.
As I slowly layer the paint, and the illusory surface coalesces on the canvas, I feel as if I clothe myself with the skin of my doppelgänger, drawing the arms and hands like gloves onto my own arms and hands, placing the mask gently over my face.
There is only one problem – the more visible the effigy of me, the more perfect my hiding place within her. I still cannot find myself, and as in a dream, my cries have no sound. It seems that the mirror world is all there is.