Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait

I decided to research the artist Frida Kahlo, as I found her self portrait very interesting and very neat. It has some characteristics that makes it look like Frida, such as the eyebrows and possibly her mouth, which looks the same as on the image below. Her expression is also the same on many of her paintings, and is what signifies her.

She uses a lot of traditional and cultural features in her paintings, which is what I definitely want for my painting, as my culture and tradition means a lot to me. She also painted mostly painted Mexican art and culture, realism, symbolism and surrealism.

On this painting, she has carefully painted all the details of what represents her, such as the leaves, stick jewelry around her neck and the animals - all symbols of nature. I have noticed that she has a strong connection with leaves especially, as I have seen three other self portraits of her with leaves in the background.

She has used different green colours on the leaves, and she has included shading which makes the whole painting slightly realistic, but still we can see that it is a painting. Overall, it is very neat and is a fantastic self portrait, in my opinion.

What I like about it, is the way she has placed herself in the middle, with things that represents her, around and on her. That is something I would want for my own portrait, but not so much. I like it simple. Also how she has made the whole painting complete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo
- Anisha