Drawn Away by Alicia Clifford

This self-portrait is a meditation on identity, repetition, and disconnection. I’ve always been drawn to portraiture, not just as a way of capturing how someone looks, but as a way of exploring who they are. Over the past year, I’ve come to love working with oil paint for exactly that reason: the way it blends, the way it lingers, and the way it allows time for reflection.

In this work, I depict myself painting an endless loop of self-portraits, each one gradually becoming more distorted. This repetition is a visual metaphor for dissociation and those moments where identity starts to blur and your sense of self feels fragmented. Art has always helped me process these feelings. This piece captures the emotional complexity of feeling distant from oneself, using the imagery of art-making as both a process of self-exploration and a metaphor for disorientation.