M A R K   R O L L E R

My work consists almost entirely of an on-going “serial portrait" of my wife, Colette Crutcher.  This project began over 28 years ago when I began recording the physical and emotional changes she underwent during her first pregnancy.  I became intrigued by the potential in a body of work focused on a single person, over time, time being the dimension missing from the conventional one-off portrait image.  I saw the possibility, through a multiplicity of images, of depicting Colette as a whole person.  Through the medium of her body, the outward expression of her inner self, I want to convey her subjective experience, as far as I understand it.  A portrait is, by definition, one person interpreting another person, scrutinizing from the outside an ever receding mystery, one which even in an open-hearted woman like Colette, plays  a teasing game of hide and seek.  So the results of my efforts are always uncertain and provisional, full of gaps which I fill in with my own materials, making my portrait a kind of self portrait. In the end, what I have created is a hybrid entity, combining elements of both of us.  My hope is that the viewer will come away with at least a sense of a powerful human presence, which is as good a way as any of describing my subjective experience of Colette in my life.