Ecce Homo: Self Portrait with a Crown of Barbed Wire

Barbed wire had turned up in a few paintings previous to this, and it was one of those things where I didn't notice the recurence of it until I looked back at a stack of things in retrospect. So the idea of doing a Christ with a crown of barbed wire seemed like the thing to do.

I was in a position in which I was about to move out of Chicago. I had given up my apartment but had need to stay in town for another month longer. I put my things into storage and was staying at the apartment of my friend Archer Prewitt, who was out on tour with a band. So I needed something small, not too complicated or messy, to work on at the time, and that's when I did this. It didn't start out as a self portrait, but no matter what I tried I couldn't come up with a face of Christ that satisfied me. Eventually I just decided to use myself as a model and that's when it became a self portrait. One of my favorite elements of this painting, however, is the cross pattern of the background. I'd become fascinated with the practice of using my "caligraphic" painting approach on what were supposed to be flat surface patterns, and the presence of the halo further complicated this one. In the end I was happy with the result.

 

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