Autorretrato trabajando

A hand holding a brush and creating a painting of a hand, a glass and some hanging threads, aided by the light of a lamp.
Carlos Arias works painting and embroidery. He has live in Mexico since 1988, stops painting from 1994 to 2015 dedicated himself to embroidery. In 1998 Arias became professor at UDLAP.
Arias selfportraits are charge with weight of different frontiers. This piece is in some way related to other paintings made before he stopped painting in the 90's, a serie of selfportrait where the linked betwen them are his person and the action of painting.
Althought in this piece "Autoretrato trabajando" Arias is not painting, we can see a part of his studio and some intruments related to his artictic production that in fact will change in the course of that year to embroidery as we can see on it. The color threads hanginig in background repalcing the paint pointed by the brush down them and the scissor that he is hoilds in the mirror,.
He is not painting himself directly, he is actually portriating himself in pieces, a shadow there, a hand here.
The artist has said in numerous times that his embroidery work is like painitng in the sense that he cares about the picture that can be built with the materials, like painitng with threads.