Ervin Locklear: Life, Career, and Me: Paint Your Self-Portrait Like Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh is my favorite artist. I have been fortunate in travels to have visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and walk Arles in the Steps of Van Gogh. The garden courtyard of the Hospital at Arles was an enjoyable stop and the Café Van Gogh is almost the same café terrace on the Place de Forum in Arles as when painted in Sep 1888. – Photo by Rudi Schols

Still operational today and now named Café Van Gogh, this is the Café that Van Gogh painted in The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night.

The following is an excerpt from "The Power of Reputation", author Chris Komisarjevsky. I found meaning in the portrayal of Van Gogh's search for identity and the linkage in defining our personal values to reveal an authentic portrait. View these portraits to see Van Gogh's changes to Self-Portrait as an Artist.

"Portraiture was the form of painting Vincent Van Gogh loved but he had no money to pay the models whom he would have hired to sit for him while he painted. So, he invested in a mirror. He went on to paint at least twenty self-portraits in Paris, moving through colors from somber browns and grays to light yellow, reds, greens, and blues...with an Impressionist style that, for him, was as much about a state of mind as it was about technique. This period of his life culminated in one of his most famous paintings, Self-Portrait as an Artist. It is a dramatic illustration of how he saw his own reflection.

For me, there are two lessons to be learned from Van Gogh, neither of which is the tragedy of his fall into insanity or the taking of a razor to his own ear.

First, even without the money he needed, he found a way to pursue what he loved. A mirror sufficed when models were too expensive. He believed in his talent and wouldn't let anything stand in his way. He pursued what he thought he would do best. He had determination and drive.

Second, he had the insight to keep looking at himself, changing paints and colors until he was able to capture and illustrate what he really saw. The mirror was the device he used to look at himself and paint portraits. Each self-portrait moved along a path of self-awareness. The colors and paints followed with time.

In our career, we too face something of the same challenges as Van Gogh. There are times when our career ambitions are hampered by obstacles; perhaps we aren't granted the budget we feel we need to accomplish our task, or the industry we love, trained in, and built our experience around is not doing well. When we are at a crossroads and need to make a career decision, such as whether to move across the country for a promotion, it is time to look within at who we are. For many of us, this has become a regular part of navigating our business lives as we move along our career trajectory.

What is not so obvious is that it is only after we look in the mirror and truly see ourselves that we can begin to shape others' perceptions of us. What we see in the mirror is what others can see too. If we want to change how we are perceived, we need to go to the source: we need to look at ourselves. Then we can paint an authentic portrait for others to witness, and that portrait becomes our reputation."

The Power of Reputation