Inspiration: Artist Laurent Dauptain sees himself staring back from his art

"Artist Laurent Dauptain is known for painting over 3000 self-portraits depicting his gradual aging.

Dorian Gray he's not.

Artist Laurent Dauptain has painted thousands of self-portraits over the past 25 years, capturing every new wrinkle, every new gray hair.

And the 49-year-old Frenchman says he'll do it until the day he dies.

"I don't have to worry about flattering somebody or hurting someone's ego," he said of his strange fixation.

Still, it took one of his most important critics - his wife of 13 years - a while to warm up to the project.

"At first I thought he was obsessed and crazy," admits Sylvie Dauptain, 46. "Now I understand."

"There's a lot of freedom," when you decide to make yourself your artistic subject, Laurent Dauptain said yesterday, shortly after arriving from Paris ahead of his exhibit in Chelsea.

It all started when, at age 20, Dauptain drew 12 self-portraits for a college assignment to imagine himself at different ages.

He was fascinated by the results, which depicted his face from age 15 to 95.

He set out on a mission to re-create the project in real time."

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This is an art exhibition showing the around 3000 self portraits of the same artist.

Firstly, I really admire the resilience and perseverance the artist has when creating this series of paintings. He need to constantly paint his self portrait everyday, no matter how bored or tired he might be. This art exhibition really shows us that being an artist is not an easy job. Many a times, artists need to continue with a piece of work for an extremely long period of time. And in the case of Duptain, he has continued on with his work for more than 25 years. Many of the good artworks in history also took a long period of time to complete, for exmaple Da Vinci spent nearly his entire second half of his life time trying to complete the 'Mona Lisa' which is now viewed as the most precious work in the world.

This series of painting also reflects his life. As he grows older, i guess this series of paintings can serve as a memory of his past as he can then reflect the things he has done in his life. Many a times, artists create works not with the sole purpose of exhibiting it. I guess artists produce the works with their own intentions. However, if artist only create works so that they can exhibit it and gain fame and fortune from it, then the process of art making has then lose its purpose and joy. Artists should do art for the enjoyment or reflection on one self or the society.

I guess this shows that no matter in creating artworks or other aspects of life, we always need to put in efforts and persevere on in order to achieve the best result.

This artworks shares the same theme as my course work. By painting his self portraits every day for 25 years, the artist has shown through his daily paintings, his every own process of aging. As we can see from the different self portraits, the physical appearance of the artist ages everyday. Although he did not painted the portraits with much details, however the audience can still feel the process of aging through his work. The paintings seem to be less energetic and having more calmness in the later portraits. He explores the issue of aging and the different stages of life in his painting, and this is the theme which I wish to explore further for my coursework.