'I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.’ - Frida Kahlo

It was a dream panel, featuring three of my favourite New Zealand artists, across the generations but with a simple common theme: themselves, in their art. 

Dame Robin White, Yvonne Todd and Claudia Kogachi sat on stage at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s lecture theatre, ready to talk about the power of self-portraiture, as part of the talk ‘Seeing the self: women artists depict themselves’.

The crowd was exactly as expected for a rainy Tuesday night at the art gallery: well-dressed, lots of thick glasses, largely women. “Welcome, ladies and six gentlemen,” joked panel host and art history professor Linda Tyler as she opened the talk and introduced her inimitable line-up of guests.

The topic itself was inspired by two of the gallery’s current must-visit exhibitions which both feature many self-portraits; Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Art and Life in Modern Mexico and Robin White: Te Whanaketanga | Something is Happening Here.

Around half of Frida Kahlo’s entire output was self-portraits, explained Tyler. “We have these fabulous images to remind us of the kind of fascination that she had with using herself as the first recourse and model, and be able to develop a repertoire of painting herself in all these different guises.”

Panellists Dame Robin, Yvonne and Claudia are all New Zealand artists who have utilised self-portraiture, across painting, photography and print-making – for various personal and practical reasons. Tyler allowed each artists to speak off-the-cuff about their own experiences with self-portraits, reflecting on specific works; from Yvonne’s “trope-centric” and character focused early works that helped to establish the rest of her career to Claudia’s similar use of personal portrayals of pop culture movie characters.

A question from the audience about self-scrutiny provoked an interesting response from all three artists; relating to what I was considering about the role of vanity. I took a few notes – here, a few of my favourite comments.

Robin White on the power, and problem-solving, of self-portraiture

“It’s like a number of works I’ve done of myself, which are a pragmatic response to the need to do something. I’m there, so I’ll do. I use a mirror, and away I go. That happens quite often, sometimes for the sheer exercise of doing something, working out ideas, keeping busy. Proving to myself that this is what I am.”

Robin White speaking about a pencil drawing of herself that was completed a few days before she gave birth to her first child]

“Sometimes a self-portrait can be an opportunity to capture a particular time in your life. That transition from the you that you were or are, into a you that’s going to be very different. A condition of life that is going to be very different, and you know that.”

‍Yvonne Todd reflecting on an unsettling early self-portrait of herself as an anorexic, titled Resulta (2004) 

“I’d always had a real interest in the macabre. And it’s something I’m quite embarrassed about. It’s almost like a clandestine fascination and it comes out in self-portraits because it’s easier to do it myself than ask someone.

“It’s been a long time since I made this image; I wouldn't make work like this now. I can see problems with a lot of my earlier work. I think I was using art as a form of therapy to work through difficult ideas and emotions, and it came out in the art.”

Yvonne Todd on a recent self-portrait titled Fleur (2020)

“This is me in a dress that I wore as a 10-year-old. It came from Rendells, the stalwart of the high street retail scene. It’s quite stretchy, that’s why I still fit it. But it was in some of my early self portraits, so it’s sort of a relic of when I was a 10-year-old. I put myself in it and it was sort of like a self-portrait as a middle-aged woman, because that’s what I am...  But the childish straw hat, contemplating of the flower, the undone hem. It’s sort of that convergence of the downtrodden and nostalgic. Confronting the camera, but also confronting myself.”

Claudia Kogachi on how life events can enter her work

“I tend to paint people who I date. In this work I had just started dating Josephine. It was kind of around the time that I was also coming out to my mum, and my Obachan [grandmother] who I am very very close with. I guess this was me trying to communicate to my mum that this was not a phase; this was a serious partner. I did a whole 10 painting series of my girlfriend and I in various movie characters. This was Brokeback Mountain, and I also did Kill Bill, Ghost, and some other films.”

Robin White on the process vs. the meaning

“In the end, it’s an artwork. The things I'm more concerned with would be the aesthetic elements of it. It’s an exercise in dark and light and line and shape and geometry, abstraction. For me, those things override any emotional goings on. I put that aside – I’m detached from that. I think, I just want to tell the truth here. I’m thinking how do the lines and the tones and plains of those hills, and this face, work together – those are the things that really interest me, rather than ‘this is all about me’. It’s there, but it’s not the most important thing for me, when I’m working on it. Really. I’m enjoying the moment of creating something.”

Yvonne Todd on the self-scrutiny that can come from self-portraiture

“As a younger woman definitely. The self scrutiny that you can never escape from. But I think actually photographing myself was a way of working through that as well. Enough time has passed, and I started reevaluating my teenage years in more depth recently, and they were deeply problematic on so many levels and I can see that what I do now makes sense; processing that deeply almost self loathing relationship I had with myself for a long time. 

I think having children has made me far more accepting. But yes, definitely a lot of self scrutiny that I experienced, and the camera sort of was a tool of that. The camera is responsible for a lot of women having issues around their appearance – so the camera is guilty. But it can also be used as a tool to reject some of that as well.”

Claudia Kogachi, also on self-scrutiny

“I find when I paint other people it’s much easier to put in all the detail, and when I paint myself it takes much longer.  I’m not sure why that is. It never really occurred to me that my work is self-obsessed until we had coffee, and Robin mentioned that her partner thought that Frida’s work is slightly self-obsessed – and Linda turned to me and said, ‘oh that means that your work is self obsessed!’ I laughed and went home and talked to Jo and asked her, and she was like, ‘yeah.’ I think you just have to own it.”