Self Portrait

Self Portrait

Paul Hutchinson is entirely self-taught. In 1974, he emigrated from the United Kingdom to Ngāmotu New Plymouth with his family and enrolled in an architectural drawing course at Taranaki Polytechnic. After winning the Bernard Aris Painting competition for young artists, Hutchinson promptly left Polytech and began painting incessantly, with his parent’s support.

Produced in 1984, this self-portrait was made while Hutchinson worked in a shared studio on King Street with Michael Smither and Tom Mutch. Rendered in a super-realist style, Hutchinson offers an unconventional angle, peering down at the viewer. For a contemporary viewer, this perspective resonates with the sight of your own face looking back when you unexpectedly open the front camera on your phone.

Hutchinson has produced numerous self-portraits throughout his career. He has said the genre is “the most honest and direct way” to express “what it is to be human.” His artistic inquiry operates as an exploration of the psyche, making evident his “self-doubt and sometimes downright self-loathing inherent in the images.”

This sustained interest in self-portraiture has also offered a means of prospecting for different forms of painterly expression. In the background of this self-portrait, the impasto application of paint gives the appearance of a stucco ceiling. Curls of hair are carved out from the paint. Indentations along the cheekbone contribute to an honest skin texture punctuated by a pimple below the lip. Hutchinson experiments with paint as playfully as he renders his twenty-something self in candid observation.

— Maya Love, 2023