“Why do we do self portraits?”

Recorded in Chaundy’s studio located at The Florence Academy of Art campus, this video explores Nicholas Chaundy’s personal process and reasons for creating self portraits, all while he works on a current oil painting inspired by 19th century Italian artists.

In this video we learn how in self portraiture, the artist is able to investigate techniques, processes, and methods he wouldn’t or couldn’t normally investigate while doing a commission or another type of work. Nicholas Chaundy uses self portraits to study and to get into the mindset of artists he admires and by using himself as the model, is able to experiment freely.

Over the past 2-3 years, Chaundy has created quite a few self portraits and aside from the opportunity of experimenting, he tells us that painting self portraits is also a great way to improve his knowledge of painting.