Essay On Frida Kahlo's Self Portraiture

Portraiture is important for all because it has the ability to draw the viewer into a different dimension, perhaps being inside the artist’s mind or into the setting of the artwork. Artists possess this power by skilfully using manipulation of various elements of design and working them into the piece in a way that all the elements fit together in a beautifully abstract puzzle. Frida Kahlo’s ‘Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ from 1940 and ‘Janet Laurence’, by John Beard made in 2007 are to be deconstructed and compared in this essay.
Mexico’s nationally recognized Kahlo was a woman of pain, experiencing many accidents that resulted in Kahlo being confined to her house, undergoing 30 operations and painting more from the growing

In Kahlo’s painting the first thing that catches your eye is Frida, same goes with Beard’s painting being that Janet is what first catches your eye. In Kahlo’s painting the fact that she is human, the colour of her skin and her size contrast with the smaller animals of different darker colours around her. Everything around Frida in the painting seemingly affiliates with Frida somehow; such as the monkey pulling on the necklace attached to Frida. Janet Laurence’s darker colours of her face contrast with her white back ground and the fact that her headshot takes up most of the painting that is one of the more significant reasons as to why she is the main focal point of the painting. In Kahlo’s piece the animals come into tie into the secondary focal point, and in Beard’s piece the secondary focal point is the details in Janet’s face; the wrinkles in the shade, the make-up and youth in the bright side of her face. In Beard’s painting the emphasis on the shadows helps create an even stronger sense of contrast. An intense degree of an organic feel has been incorporated into the piece from the dotted and blotchy paint stroke technique Beard has