I have decided to finish my art education by doing a series of portraits. I think both as artists and people, what we are most interested in is each other. On meeting, when we look into each other’s faces, we are seeking information. We want to what the other person is really like, how similar they are to ourselves. We want to know the person behind the image of themselves they project. We want to know about their hopes and fears. In the fifteen minutes, I gave myself for each portrait I tried to look beyond the superficial to the person beneath.

I wanted this to be a cooperative project, involving as much of the college as possible, so I asked my sitters to write a short statement about themselves. I said the statements could be as light or as profound as they wished or if they wished they could say nothing. I found art students to be refreshingly open and honest about themselves. They are the co-artists in this project, their statements are at least as important as my portraits. Without the statements this would just be a sketchbook now it is a work of conceptual art.