The Extraordinary of Self Portraits

Bryan Lewis Saunders

Born in 1969, in Washington, D.C. Saunders is an endurance artist, a performance artist, videographer, performance poet, and self-portrait painter known for his disturbing spoken word rants, tragic art performances and stand-up tragedy.On March 30, 1995, Saunders began drawing at least one self-portrait every day for the rest of his life. For 11 days in 2001, Saunders conducted an experiment in which he ingested or inhaled a different intoxicant everyday and created a self-portrait under the influence documenting the effects of his altered perception.

Exploring The mind of Bryan Lewis Saunders

Why Self Portaits?

All the while he had been drawing between one and nine self-portraits every day in the same, uniform Strathmore 400 series hardbound notebooks he still uses now.It was an experiment that began on January 30, 1995 with a pencil sketch of a smiling, bespectacled man.“There’s a luminosity or something in the picture,” he says, digging it out. “I was really excited and happy. But the first eight books are almost all black and white. I was really depressed.” Over time Saunders began using his self-portraits as a mirror and a tuning fork: a way to find out if he was on song. He describes the process as “kind of like Tarot cards.” “I just draw myself automatically and then see. If I have claws or sharp fangs or something, maybe I shouldn’t go out tonight. I’ve done it so many times that if I see these type of features, or I use these type of colors, I know that I’m more prone to drink excessively or something, [or] get into some type of trouble.