I visited Rembrandt’s House a couple of years back with Clarice during our time in Amsterdam. He was a crazy hoarder like me, just with more things, and during a time when it was expensive to own things. He had his studio spaces where his disciples would practice to paint exactly like how he did. He had places where he would mix his paints and draw. And of course, the rooms where his wife and him lived at, with their child.
I bought a bunch bookmarks based off his etchings, and one of them is a series of self portraits he did. Rembrandt was famous for painting himself into a scene, and sometimes that gives a viewer an alternative perspective. Where would you be in a gospel scene with Christ?
But I guess a bigger question I have started to consider is how much he drew to end up with himself as the subject to practice? If he already owned a ton of things, and he had people around him often enough, why couldn’t he just paint them or the things he owned? My take is he probably did already, just that he did it so many times, and the archivists who have consolidated his work probably valued his self portraiture more. There’s angles, theres’s poses, and he’d fare well as an influencer with his choice of hats and outfits.
I wish I had some determination at his level, to keep on drawing or making things. I write here, for now, but there are things I won’t produce online for one, and there are other projects not be seen by the public maybe ever. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it as “an artist” but I think it’s not the point to. The point is to express myself as a person into the world around me. What people do with the pieces of me after I’m gone is what matters to them. What matters to me is how I live my life today. I want to use as much of my life as possible in all the moments I have been given.
Just like Rembrandt painting everything and running out of things to paint.
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