September 29, 2025
That is right. HAIR! That is the main subject of an art project I finished a while ago… I was eager to share this piece, but I also wanted to keep it as a surprise during the Elgin County Studio Tour that happened in the last weekend of September. But now I can disclose it on my website. Those who visited the tour lavished praise on it. Which is balm for the sometimes tormented soul of the artist…
Where does this obsession with my own hair come from, you may wonder. You may remember my blogpost in June, about a painting of my younger self with a baby curl…. It came from my childhood home in the Netherlands. When I was visiting this winter, an unexpected find made its way straight into my suitcase: hair! MY hair, to be precise. Lots of it! My hair as a baby, my hair from subsequent years. I found it in a drawer in a room I was reorganising and cleaning in preparation of my mom’s future move to a senior home.
If an unsuspecting stranger had stumbled upon my mom’s collection of my hair, they’d almost think that this was a lugubrious trophy collection of a serial killer! But rest assured: my mom is an innocent mother, who just adored my hair so much, that she could not stand it being tossed after a visit to the hair dresser. So she kept what was cut off, especially when it was cut down from a decent length. To this day she claims full creator-rights of the fact that my hair is wavy and sometimes even curly. “When you were a baby, I rolled it around my finger to make curls, and that is why you now still have curls and waves!”, she will tell anyone who will listen with great conviction. To her, the hair clippings are evidence of that statement. And don’t you dare to disagree with her!
I never shared her fascination, though. In my Elementary School years, my hair was blindingly white, which is typical for many people of northern European countries. The local bullies would first call me “Witlof! Witlof!” – the Dutch word for the white vegetable chicorei or Belgian endive. And later “Redhead! Redhead!”, when it developed a honey-coloured tinge. It is one of the reasons I hated going to school. The bullying got worse as I grew into a teenager and it was absolutely gruelling. Those of you who were victims of bullying will understand this!
Now that I am almost a senior, I do look at my hair differently, if only because it has not gone gray yet. I am sure it will, in due time, as my mom (a natural blonde) is now a beautiful white-gray nonagenarian. I always say that the most ‘co-operative part of me is my hair’. It does not matter how it is styled, it will hold its shape for a long time and hairdressers still fawn over it. It is kind of neat and it took until I was older to really appreciate it.
So what does all of this have to do with my new art project? Well, as you can see below, I decided to center my new piece around my own face and my own hair. And just for the fun of it I used Photoshop to add my glasses to it, as many may not recognise me without them! The glasses are not present in the original that now hangs on my wall. One visitor stared at my eyes for a long time and complimented me on the life-like eyes and the stare. That compliment was received in gratitude. It was an astute observation: I always pay special attention to eyes in my paintings, whether human or animal. So: I present to you: my self portrait with multi generational real hair!
