Point of Exquisite Suspension: Living Space as Self-Portrait: My Room May 1982

Attic bedroom interior pencil sketch by O. Douglas Jennings

I've always considered art drawn of one's living space to be a type of self-portrait. With his famous painting of his room at Arles, Van Gogh must have felt the same way. I made the sketch above while sitting on my twin-size bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms of my parents' home. It was done with an HB Pencil in my sketchbook/diary. I was 22 years old and would be moving to the Chicago area in three months.

Here is a link to a charcoal drawing of this same room 3 years earlier.

The room looks somewhat more sparse than when I previously was staying there. I had moved back home after staying somewhere else for several months. The large wardrobe is gone and I've added a weight bench and dumbells.

When I relocated to the Northwest Chicago Suburb of Algonquin, IL the following August, I would make a sketch of my less spacious accommodations as I roomed with a co-worker where I lived for several months. I should draw a sketch of my current room. Stay tuned.

More Self Portraits on Flickr

This is also a good place to include a Google Drive Link to a re-formatted paper wrote in college about the psychological benefits of self-portraiture -- officially titled "Psychodynamic Processes of Self Portraiture".