Self Portrait with Tufted Titmouse

The idea for this series came from a title, to be quite honest. I love a play on words. I’ve always admired Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits and wanted to try my hand at that kind of portraiture—but with my own twist.

Kahlo’s paintings weren’t self-portraits simply for the sake of capturing an image. They were loaded with symbolism and, at the time, were often described as surreal. Frida once said, in essence, that what people saw as surrealism was simply her reality.

That idea resonated with me. You might see realism or a representative style when you look at my work, but there is usually a lot of symbolism happening beneath the surface.

In this series, the symbolism comes through the animals I chose and the expressions within each painting. In the largest painting of the series, the Tufted Titmouse sits on my imagined shoulder. The shoulder itself isn't painted into the scene—the bird is simply there with me, dropping feathers as it looks away from the viewer while I make direct eye contact.

The Tufted Titmouse is associated with being a keeper of knowledge. In this painting, I’m looking directly at the viewer while the bird looks away, suggesting the search for truth and knowledge—and the uncomfortable reality that sometimes we aren't ready to face what we find.