940, 2020

Galya Kerns creates multi-media self-portraits, using digital imagery, 3-D objects, and paint. This self-portrait shows the artist becoming engulfed in her art materials.

Artist Ira Beckway Looking at Kathe Kolwitz Book, 2020

During the pandemic, Ira Grin and I began taking lessons online from Ukrainian artist Vadim Suvarov in July, and we have all become good friends. All of us have been making artworks of each other. These relationships have been bright spots in this strange time. — Eliza Plumlee

Becky and Oslo, 2021

Eliza’s Hands #1, 2021

During the pandemic, my friend Eliza Plumlee and I would use each other as models for portraits and studies of the figure. Eliza is an artist, and I am fascinated with her creator's hands. During this past month, I have created dozens of drawings of her hands from life and from plaster casts she created for me to use as a reference when we cannot meet. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their hands. It is a portrait of an artist. — Ira Grin

Envy, 2021

Expectations, 2016

This 10-minute video is a collection of five portraits. Those portrayed are Shiloh Ashley, Cydnei Mallory, Andrew Noble, Veronica Aponte, and Kimberly Lyle. In 2016, each was a fellow graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts program at Arizona State University. In front of the camera and each other, they speak to what their lives may be like after graduation—as artists, as debt holders, as nomads, as workers. In 2021, we view these accounts with a hindsight that encompasses the truths of what did happen and with the heavy knowledge of present realities. — Kara Roschi To view the full 10-minute video, visit KaraRoschi.com/expectations or scan this QR code:

Finding Shelter, 2020

I Am a Casualty of Unschooling, 2021

These portraits are the first in a yearlong series in which I look back on my roots. In each portrait I take a single event or circumstance and craft it into an image of who I was at that time. By exposing my roots in this way, I invite myself to consider which elements of my past made me who I am today, asking myself what I want to honor and what I want to leave behind. This is a portrait of me amid the material remains of my unschooling, including belly dance costumes, Koine Greek, and the periodic table of elements I had to memorize. — Alexandra Ross

Immaterial, 2021

Most of my work is an iteration of a self-portrait. Introspection lends itself to my process and enables a subconscious state to make work that reveals itself and myself in the end. I like to think of this process as the point of the sleep cycle in which you are almost asleep but not quite, halfway dreaming, all these images coming together, all a part of my psyche. — Laura Amphlett

Jane and Gracie, 2021

Jane Kelsey-Mapel and Becky Frehse have exhibited their collaborative mixed media assemblages in Washington and Arizona, including Phoenix venues like the Phoenix Airport Museum and Practical Art. For this exhibition, they both made individual portraits of each other holding their dogs with images of their own artwork in the background.

Longing, 2011

Kelsey-Mapel and Frehse have been friends since their art school days at Arizona State University. After graduate degrees, establishing careers as professional artists, and raising families, they decided in 2011 to collaborate on new work. With Frehse in Tacoma and Kelsey-Mapel in Phoenix, they communicate via the internet and have spent time in each other's studios. Longing is one of their collaborative works. It portrays Frehse in a fantasy portrait as a Chinese Tang dynasty court lady. Kelsey-Mapel sculpted the ceramic head, and Frehse carved and surfaced the robe. One of the motivations for Kelsey-Mapel and Frehse to continue their collaboration is sharing the challenge of stepping out of one’s comfort zone and being open to what might happen in a spontaneous moment of creative inspiration. For an archive of their collaborative work, visit ReconfiguredArt.com.

Mandorka Resurrected, 2021

Maria Del Rosario Coming Home, 2021

I painted this portrait of my mother to signify where we go and what we carry always defines us, no matter if these things are seen or unseen. My mother commutes twice daily on public transportation to work at her job at the airport. However, my mother is more than just her job, she is always shifting, moving, and changing as she experiences her life. Home, like us, changes and shifts. — Katherine Del Rosario Katherine Del Rosario (b. 1996, Seattle, Washington) is a Filipina American painter currently based in Tempe. Her paintings reflect familial relationships, womanhood, and her Filipino identity. She utilizes her own family as inspiration through her work and signifies the importance of their sacrifice. She received a bachelor of fine arts in painting at Arizona State University in 2019.

Melissa, 2000

Muriel by Kathi Knox

My work is based on observation of patterns, reflected light, shadow, and line. I am most interested in trying to capture those images that are visible for only a brief time then disappear. These images provide a starting point for a monotype, linocut, collagraph, or etching. The print becomes a reminder of the day and a record of a particular moment. Our family gatherings are sometimes formal but are more often impromptu get-togethers. This print from my Family series, Muriel, portrays our 2-year-old niece just after having s’mores in the backyard. The youngest of three sisters, she doesn’t talk much, but she has no trouble communicating how she feels through her expressions and body language. — Kathi Knox

Nicholas in Trouble, 2019

Although not a “people person,” I have always been drawn to portraiture. I am fascinated by the ways artists choose to represent their subjects’ unique qualities and how they pick both obvious and subtle techniques to best exhibit those qualities. In Nicholas's portrait, I wanted to reflect the hard and soft dichotomy that I see in his personality. I painted an expression that may seem gruff initially, like he does when you meet him, but is full of concern and deep feeling. — Dana Corbo

No Hugs, NO Kisses, 2021

This photograph shows grandparents looking at their son and grandson through an arcadia door. The grandfather is a COVID-19 survivor. Admitted into the hospital two days before Christmas, he spent a month in the ICU, where he was intubated. No family members were allowed to visit during this time. This story has a happy ending: the intubation allowed his lungs to recover, and he was able to return home early to make room for others in critical condition. Wheelchair-bound and connected to an oxygen tank, quarantine measures are still upheld for the safety of visitors. This is an emotional reunion through a glass barrier. No hugs and no kisses permitted. — Johanna Virgil

Portrait of Leah #1, 2019

My work is almost entirely figurative, and I rarely delve into portraiture. The one exception has been for my closest friend, my wife. I made this portrait when we once shared studio space together. She sat for it a few times, but mostly it was made from watching her working on her own paintings, coming together slowly and at leisure. The portrait is deeply personal, serving as a time capsule of her, our relationship, and my thoughts and feelings at the time. — William Touhey

Portrait of Nola, But Also Like a Flower Mound, 2021

As a child, I spent weeks at a time hospitalized with lung disease. Through spells of sickness, I took solace in my imagination, drawing and redrawing hundreds of versions of the same subject—each act of repetition pulling me deeper into a realm where sickness could not find me.  In spring, quarantining with my family, I found myself reaching for the same comfort—the comfort of repetition—that I had decades earlier. Like the confines of a hospital room in Seattle, my world shrank to the size of my studio. Through the meditative and soothing process of creating, the uncertainty of living in a country ravaged by a novel virus dissipated. I disappeared into other worlds—amalgamations of imagery existing somewhere between memory and imagination.  The resulting series, Flower Mounds, is verdant, undulating, biomorphic work—the expression of my own exuberance for life and a love letter to the natural world, borne of a coping mechanism from early adolescence. Flower Mounds offers an escape into soft, surreal landscapes: a safe place to land. — Lex Gjurasic

Rachie, 2010

Reflection, 2021

Reflection is a self-portrait with my daughters’ images in my eyes. During a particularly complex time, it came to me, handling the current realities, trying to cope with my work and aspirations on the one hand, and the need to be there for my family on the other. — Lilach Keren

Self Portrait on Zoom, 2020

Stubborn, 2020

For my self-portraits, I choose to share a more holistic story about myself. Because I am compulsively honest, I wanted to highlight my bad qualities in addition to my good ones. For Stubborn, I painted a portrait of myself with brutal honesty, exaggerating the leg hair I stubbornly refuse to shave. — Dana Corbo

Summer 2020, 2020

This work, made under COVID-19 restrictions, is a portrait of me with my two best friends for a print exchange, reflecting the year 2020. We got through the summer by social distancing in my swimming pool. — Wendy Willis

The Arrival, 2021

I have not always known where I am from. Born in north Georgia, I spent my childhood in Scottsdale and adolescence in Costa Rica. After a year in Europe with no fixed address, I crash-landed in Canada in 2004. I have moved 35 times in my life, and 2021 is the year in which I begin to average less than one move per year. In an effort to protect me and my sisters from the corrosive forces of the institutions of education, government, and religion, I was unschooled and had disrupted contact with much of regular society. These decisions resulted in unique and often difficult childhood experiences. The Arrival depicts the moment I arrived at college with everything I thought I needed to be a successful adult: ballet shoes, Gaelic Bible, 19th century poetry, and a violin, among other items. — Alexandra Ross

The Lost but Not Forgotten, 2020

Photographing people involves an exchange of energy, and when I capture portraits of a vulnerable population, I cannot simply ask for photos without giving something back in return. I bring meals to those who are hungry, make a connection, ask them their names, and learn about their stories—recognizing those that are suffering and need some attention and love. Their stories leap out of their eyes and into my lens; truly, little needs to be said. — Rebecca Clark

The Twins, 2015

The Twins is a portrait of the artist’s twins. Davis has a lifetime’s history in the arts, drawing as a child, following his parents around museums, and making rudimentary sketches of the old masters. He watched his father draw and discovered early the doorway to parallel worlds scrawled into notebooks. Drawing served as a way forward when it seemed there was none. From drawing came painting. Davis’s work skates along a crumbly edge between autobiography and the fantastic, examining those places where the pleasure and burden of the body intersect with the lightness of dreams and nightmares.

Un-translatable Connection, 2020

I am an intuitive wanderer who is inspired by the integration of life experiences and self-rediscovery. The leopard is the reflection of the depths of my inner strength and imagination. I see the bold, boundless, and infinitely expanding soul that lives inside me. These influences are reflected in expressive brushwork and bold visuals that lead me on an emotional journey of Un-translatable Connection. — Tiesha Harrison

XXIII, 2019

The figure is a Black femme peacefully sitting and contemplating themself without a chair. They are holding their own weight in a society that has done everything it can to make it impossible for survival, including the taking of the chair.

Neon Camo, 2021

Susan Allred elevates humble materials in form and meaning, creating artwork from fibers. Allred's art practice requires her to slow down, to be calm, to understand how the material can be coaxed to create the form she wants. She believes this quietness is expressed in the work and that it will provide respite and release for viewers. The artist is currently a member of Eyelounge, an artist-run gallery in Phoenix.