Lockdown Three

Cian McLoughlin

Lockdown Three, 2021

Oil on canvas

This self-portrait was completed during the Covid-19 lockdown in early 2021. It is a visual account of a bleak time. The painting is part of an ongoing series that the artist has been developing for several years. Titled Tronies, it comprises a series of abstract heads, reinterpreting the tronie genre of head paintings from the Flemish Baroque and 16th/17th-century Dutch. The term ‘tronie’ translates as ‘head’, ‘face’ or ‘countenance’. It was applied to depictions of the head and face that are not portraits in the traditional sense, but which are studies of expression, type, physiognomy or character. Here, Cian appropriated this attitude to the genre of self-portraiture.

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