"Clonazepam", 2011
Fun things to do when you are kind of high on prescription drugs: Draw a self-portrait in Photoshop, as in the image above.
This was not at all an original concept. There's another guy who has made a whole practice out of making art that is about his experiences with altered perception and substance use. His name is Bryan Lewis Saunders, and you can find his website here: http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/
He's pretty honest about how fucked up his project was in the beginning, and that it almost caused lasting damage to his faculties, but I'm fascinated by his dedication to making his intoxicant portraits an authentic experience for his own purposes.
While we're on the topic of depicting drug experience in visual art, let's also embed a link to the most fantastic video ever to appear on the Youtubes, "Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No" by James Blagden.
Most newer Mac products come with a webcam that can tilt and bend the face in stupid ways, which is where I think most of that creative impulse to depict oneself while in an altered state gets deposited. They all preselect an algorithm that makes predictable facial shifts appear on camera. I don't like most of them, except for the vertical flip, which allowed me to see what I would look like if I had perfectly symmetrical facial features.
FRIGHTENING!
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