Seeing Yourself.

This week I have the pleasure of learning about Kehinde Wiley. Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings. While watching the video of some of his work that he did, it took my breath away. The realisticness of all of his work was amazing! Not only that, Wiley was really able to recreate realistic black people. When conversations were happening in class, I made the comment that “ most black people are stereotyped and we all are told we have this certain “look” to us or “talk” to us. That we dress a certain way, live in certain areas”. Others try to paint that image for a black American. However, Wiley drew black Americans for exactly who they were, them. He did not paint the “image” version. He showed us that black Americans should not have this stigma or this stereotype to their name because every black person is different. Also, within each of his portraits it takes a dip into that person's life. It typically comes from the background. The background in his portraits really brought his paintings to life and added that uniqueness. For my self-portrait I did not choose to draw myself, I chose to draw someone else. Why? It is often hard for me to look at myself in the mirror, not because I am a bad person, but because I have qualities about myself that I am not 100% confident with or strong enough to put down on paper. My insecurities often stop me from blooming. So throughout this process, I started with the background, I thought that maybe if I created a background first that I could then figure out what self-portrait I could pick to go with it. Even with doing this, it was all still very hard. In the end because I started over so many times, I ended up taking regular lined paper and creating my portrait because it helped me keep my lines straight and crisp. I then scanned the lined paper onto copy paper so now my portrait has this type of background that I can now add on to. This can be emotional not just for older students but for younger kids as well. However, teaching them the beauty about themself is beyond important. I would integrate Wiley into my math lessons, writing lessons, and social studies lessons. Because the students can learn about proportion when creating a portrait, they can write about how self-portraits make them feel, and then they can learn the history behind Wiley. I can teach Wiley to my students by bringing up some of the hard conversations and that is how the world see’s different skin colors, and stereotypes. We would talk about things they have heard, seen, or been through and then show them how Wiley is changing Americans perspectives through his portraits. They would be able to see that there is an artist out there trying to do some good not only in his community but in the world.