ACES // Artists of Color Expo & Symposium is a BIPOC-led, community-curated program featuring art exhibits, live performances, presentations, workshops, film screenings, artist talks, artist opportunity tables and art market. We are coming together with intentionality to value our work and see one another as resources, while focusing on the challenges and solutions we face as artists of color in the Pacific Northwest.
ACES 2023 is a hybrid event, presented online and in person.
I have a great love of portraits, both in photography and painting. Ive spent a lot of time practicing realism and now have been trying to set my paintings apart from photographs. I often find myself drawn to self portraits with some surreal elements. I have always found myself a difficult subject, I think because I struggle to see myself honestly. Depicting a true and accurate representation of myself requires a vulnerability and acceptance that I still find myself fighting for. Painting, in general, is, in a way, like falling in love over and over. I feel in painting a subject it requires you to see it as it is. In all its flaws, beauty, personality and you begin to fall in love with all that is unique about that subject. So in a way, self portraits are a bit like a self love experiment.
