Tom Secrest, Three Sides of the Self, 2007
Ink wash and line resist on paper, 17 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches
Courtesy CUE Art Foundation

Secrest's cluttered home studio contrasts dramatically with the hotel room in which Hancock conducts the interview. Secrest sits, slump shouldered, in front of a bed and nondescript backboard. The artist is framed by two sconce lamps and a typically forgettable piece of "motel art." His eyes and speech are weary, his beard scraggly. Secrest punctuates his answers to Hancock's questions with hoarse chuckles and occasionally gestures with his left hand. He wears a heavy, ornate ring on his middle finger.

"Isolation has become a major factor in my life," he says. "I didn't do it to myself." But, to some extent, he has done it to himself, and his artist statement admits as much. "Those small pads of paper were the substance which would allow me to escape from my surroundings and to fall into my own form of 'Neverland' or down Alice's rabbit hole. The issue of 'reality' had little interest to me. To be the dreamer and escaping person has long been my way of living." Which came first, we might ask, the isolation or the escapism? The way Secrest speaks of it, he is a victim, a martyr.

Self-portraiture became common practice in the 15th century, when mirrors were made cheaply available. Artists chose to depict themselves because doing so was practical; the artist is his own best model, willing to sit whenever he wants to work. Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn were among the first artists renowned for self-portraits, but it wasn't until the 19th and 20th centuries that an increasingly ego-driven culture accepted certain self-portraits as masterpieces. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele and Frida Kahlo, all prolific self-portraitists, were all celebrated for revealing their inner lives, and yet it is difficult to disregard the self-absorption — equal parts self-loathing and self-aggrandizement — that compelled these artists and so many of their contemporaries.

Tom Secrest, The Observer, 2007, Acrylic on canvas board
23 x 19 inches, Courtesy CUE Art Foundation

Yet, despite the ascendency of iCulture, self portraits are a relative rarity in the contemporary art world. But perhaps Secrest is just more honest than others about his self-importance. After all, a great many young artists have retreated into the realms of Alice and the Little Prince. Although most do not depict themselves as actors in the fantastic worlds they envision, they are motivated, like Secrest, by a desire to escape real-world anxiety. Hancock's choice of artist is pertinent, then; Secrest is an unsung artistic forebear.

For Secrest, the self-portrait is no effigy. The picture is a fight to manifest the self and a proclamation, "I exist!" As I walk around the CUE exhibition, I wonder if such navel gazing is a product of the time or if the time is a product of our selfish preoccupations.