A friend of mine recently sent me this link, to the paintings of William Utermohlen. Diagnosed with Alzheimers five years ago, Utermohlen began a series of self-portraits to document the progression of his illness. They are so incredibly haunting, in not only their stylistic/aesthetic change in spatial awareness and structure, but in the obvious shift of perception that Utermohlen experienced.
The drawings begin in such a refined and delicate manner, everything is well proportioned, spaced and delineated. Utermohlen creates standard, thought lovely, self portraits - as though he is simply looking in a mirror, in the age old grade school arts project we've all completed. But as they progress, it is almost as though.. as though the mirror gets dirty, mildewed, that what he can and can't see isn't clear anymore, the lines are thick and ragged, ill-proportioned, meandering. Clicking from picture to picture you can see him almost begin to slip off the page, drooping and sliding, trickling down the mirror like condensation.
Each painting seems to contain it's own personality, a stage in life, an age in life - each could have concievably, metaphorically, realistically - come from a different person. And perhaps they did. The paintings are all.. beautiful. Taken apart, they are stunning and sad and haunting, taken together - I suppose it shows how close our sanity and genius lay to each other, and how they mirror each other on brief and stunning occasions.
The drawings begin in such a refined and delicate manner, everything is well proportioned, spaced and delineated. Utermohlen creates standard, thought lovely, self portraits - as though he is simply looking in a mirror, in the age old grade school arts project we've all completed. But as they progress, it is almost as though.. as though the mirror gets dirty, mildewed, that what he can and can't see isn't clear anymore, the lines are thick and ragged, ill-proportioned, meandering. Clicking from picture to picture you can see him almost begin to slip off the page, drooping and sliding, trickling down the mirror like condensation.
Each painting seems to contain it's own personality, a stage in life, an age in life - each could have concievably, metaphorically, realistically - come from a different person. And perhaps they did. The paintings are all.. beautiful. Taken apart, they are stunning and sad and haunting, taken together - I suppose it shows how close our sanity and genius lay to each other, and how they mirror each other on brief and stunning occasions.
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