Blumenthal, Series to Self, 2025
Oil paint on wood
12x18
Series to Self presents a sequence of self-portraits, transforming from realistic to increasingly abstract as viewers move through the collection. The project originated as a personal documentation method—Blumenthal would create these portraits after returning home from grueling shifts during his first year of medical residency, using art to process the day's intense clinical experiences.
The paintings exist in stark contrast to the formal, glamorized physician portraits that line the hospital hallways where Blumenthal works. While those traditional paintings present an idealized image of medical professionals, Blumenthal's series deliberately reveals the less polished reality—capturing moments of exhaustion, doubt, and the emotional toll of patient care.
Upon arriving home each night, physically and emotionally drained from hospital work, Blumenthal would immediately turn to his paints. The earliest paintings in the series show clear, recognizable self-portraits with tired eyes and tense expressions. As viewers progress through the collection, the representations become increasingly fragmented and abstract, reflecting the artist's deeper psychological journey and the progressive emotional processing of his daily experiences.
The portraits' green and blue tones deliberately reference the interwar art period (1918-1939), when artists like Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Max Beckmann responded to the unprecedented trauma of World War I by rejecting established artistic conventions. Having witnessed extraordinary human suffering as soldiers or civilians, these artists found traditional representational techniques inadequate to express psychological trauma. Their shift toward expressionism, surrealism, and abstraction stemmed from a profound need to communicate emotional truths that realistic depiction could not convey. Similarly, Blumenthal's progressive abstraction throughout the series reflects how sustained exposure to suffering in medical practice pushes conventional representation to its limits, requiring new visual languages to process profound human experiences.
Medical phrases scratched into the foreheads of each portrait capture Blumenthal's ongoing ruminations as a physician. The gradual abstraction mirrors his journey into his own psyche—each painting peeling back another layer of professional identity to reveal raw emotional states beneath.
