To collection
Tom Hardy has spoken about his preference for becoming other people rather than being himself, describing acting as a way of stepping outside his own identity. That tension between recognition and identity resonates with my approach to portraiture. A face seems to tell us who someone is, yet the longer we look, the less certain that becomes. I Don’t Want to Be Me is a portrait of Hardy, but also a reflection on the distance between a face, a public persona and the person behind it.