“Coal Miner”

“Coal Miner” began as an exploration of abstracted portraiture; it ended with me pushing further and further away from human form. It began as a throwaway project, a challenge from a professor to abstract someone beyond recognition. It is now one of my personal favorite pieces.

It also remains one of my only portraits that I have done.

Inspired by images of coal miners with soot on their faces. The once-natural lines in their faces, their wrinkles, crows’ feet, and smile and brow lines all become exaggerated and uncanny. Headlamps become an extension of the head that pulls us up, up, up, and away from the haunting look so many have in their sunlight-deprived eyes.

These features, exaggerated and uncanny as they are, resonated deeply.

I wanted to see how one’s work can alter oneself. Inevitably, labor-intensive work alters the body, but does it also distort our ability to view people with humanity? Do leathery skin from a life working in the field, or hunched backs, or soot-stained skin, or calloused hands, make someone less than? Freckles, blemishes, wrinkles, and gray hair are all unavoidable; they are part of what it means to live life. To some, they represent the toll time takes. To others, they show a life well lived.

“Coal Miner” was done fast. It wasn’t a laborious task to complete; it simply was. Venus from the sea, it arrived to me fully fleshed out; a vision in my head, I knew I could pull into reality. A vision of a man, distorted. The headlamp melts seamlessly into the skin, making it impossible to tell where his face ends and the helmet begins.

The work has abstracted the man from us and from himself. But the work must be done, so it will be done – be it by man, or machine, or something else entirely.

“Coal Miner” 12 × 12” oil on chipboard, 2022, M.E.Hodge

“Coal Miner” is now privately owned.