ARTIST STATEMENT

Hi my name is Gabrielle Bones. I’m an actress and photographer. I’m from Utah, I moved to New York 9 years ago and my self-portraits have grown since. It's a familiar story, my dad gave me a camera when I was younger- I really was only interested in photographing people and I didn't have anyone to take photos of so I decided to take pictures of myself. Whenever I get restless and I feel a strong emotion, I panic. I feel the urge to create something.. I need to put it somewhere because I can't hold it anymore. I find a corner in my room or find somewhere the light is beautiful. I just sit with it, I sit with all of the feeling, I leave the camera going and just wait and it always comes out. It's like my therapy in a way, creative expression. I’m very particular with my art so I’ll go a week or a month without creating but I’ve noticed that when there are a lot of things going on in my life that I want to avoid and not deal with I'll have more self-portraits. I grew watching comedies so when I saw my first real drama Moulin Rouge. I had a moment where I was overwhelmed with all of these new feelings. It was devastating and beautiful. It completely opened up the world to me in a way I had never experienced before. I knew then that I wanted to help people escape their lives by watching and making things that completely wreck them and question the world. I had that realization and then got involved in theater and moved to New York to act in and make things that I’m proud of and use all these feelings that I have inside of me for the good and for fun and be able to play with them and show people that its ok. Self-portraits kind of came into that because I thought what's something that I can make/do where I can get my emotions out on my own in a creative way. You can act on your own,  you can film a monologue, film a scene but essentially you need a whole crew, it’s a whole production but if on a Tuesday afternoon I want to make something, I'm starving to make something to get my emotions and my everything out self portraits are right in my hands, the softer more still, intimate parts of my work right now are coming out just because I'm a bit more still in my life not to bring up the pandemic but it was pretty dark and I was like venturing out into the hallways of my building and so my portraits were dark, I was screaming a lot and that's what I was going through internally and that came out in my work. Right now I feel a little bit sad and still and there's some longing and loneliness and I think that that's what's coming out of my work right now. Acting and self-portraiture they’re connected- it’s all this internal life that you have and as soon as the camera comes out it’s like wow there's another thing viewing this- what’s going on inside of me when I take self-portraits I can really take my time and live inside of that feeling and it really helps my acting because I’m already so comfortable with that and its already to the surface because I play with it so often. I was trained in Meisner which is a technique where you take imaginary circumstances and you put a little bit of truth in it and so you have this full life living inside of you and it's not real and so it protects you from your real pain but you also can get some of that out and work through it so I think that when I work on self-portraits there's so much patience and permission that I'm giving myself that isn't always there with acting because you have a whole bunch of people in the room you have a director but I don't set out to do self-portraits to get better at acting but it helps. I had a friend say that I'm more in my body than I have ever been and she can see that through my work and and in person which is a note that I got in class all the time was from my acting coach take up more space and self-portraits help me do that. It's definitely two separate things but they feed each other. Someone said don't you feel vain shooting self-portraits all the time.. I don’t. It's not me in the photos, it's someone i'm making and of course it's all my feeling but it's a character- it’s like a version of me. Some days I feel really shy about my art and some days I don’t. I don't know why I feel shy about it.. maybe because it is so intimate and vulnerable- I want to give 100% myself and it’s hard to do in the world and it takes a while to build trust with people and I feel like when I’m doing self-portraits on my own, I'm not afraid to be totally authentic and real. I want people to see me for me and I don't ever want to be accused of not being real. It's beautiful to be raw in an intimate way. Self-portraits have helped me be more like that in real life with people I interact with. Shooting self-portraits and practicing that kind of permission and scary thing of like putting myself out there and showing that intimate side of me, which only my closest friends and my family see is beautiful because it's me you know its truth. I'm not in my head like I am with everything else, it’s the one time that I'm not thinking and overthinking and stressing about things. It just feels good and it's easy and I'm not thinking about it, when I'm acting and when I'm taking self-portraits.. I'm not and it's so beautiful, it’s so quiet up there. It the only time in my life I don't worry about the outcome, that's why the permission is there. It's the only place in my life where I don't worry about failure. I have a lot of self worth but then do I deserve this? I don't know. It’s a split feeling, an internal battle. I feel really confident about my work then I have that side of me that doubts it. The more I shoot and play and create the quieter the voice gets and that is so beautiful and freeing. My art is my journey of navigating that feeling and becoming all the different sides of me and my pain, and trying to find love and patience and kindness in between.