"Know thyself." So said Socrates in a truism that could have been a verbal guide to artists for centuries to come. Throughout history, artists have exercised their art as a means of understanding the world around them, humanity at large, groups be they cultural or social and perhaps most intimately, themselves. The history of portraiture and more specifically the self-portrait can be read as an exploration into the artist's understanding of emotion and the human psyche.

Rembrandt was a prolific self-portraitist who left us a dizzying array of studies in the inner workings of human emotion. While many of his self-portrait sketches and paintings were studies into the physiological manifestations of emotional expression, they were, more often than not, an attempt to understand the emotions beneath the expression and how those emotions present themselves to others. In other words, the paintings are often not about the affected expression so much as how that conveyance of emotion impacts the viewer.

Oftentimes the artist revealed extensive emotional and psychological underpinnings even when the sitter's (artist's) expression was otherwise neutral. Vincent van Gogh's celebrated Self-Portrait (1889), portrays the artist in a passive pose, yet there is no mistaking the inner turmoil wracking and wreaking the artist, a state that would ultimately lead to his suicide. The swirling chaotic background reveals far more than the artist's own visage.

When self-proclaimed Realist, Gustave Courbet turned his gaze inward many thought his expression had somehow abandoned the Realism the artist espoused. The facial contortions were contrived, exaggerated and quite beyond any "real" expression, but they missed the point.

Courbet was not painting outer reality so much as he was projecting a mask of emotion to portray an intense inner reality, a reality of the psyche.

Vicki Walsh continues and updates the practice in her intensely detailed portraits. In her Scream Series the sitters shriek out in exaggerated abject terror. Like Courbet, Walsh suggests that it is not the outward expression that is the reality for the viewer, but the inner emotion of which the expression is merely a vehicle. As if to emphasize the abstract reality of emotion over expression, the portraits are highlighted by abstract geometric shapes removing the sitter from any identifiable setting.

In her Neutral Series, Walsh presents more restrained subjects, but with no less powerful emotional content. The faces are inscrutable, but the intense detail is inescapable and causes the viewer to confront every line, wrinkle and subtle twitch that may convey something of the sitter's inner workings. If they are in any way unsettling it is due to our identification with the subject. We may not know the individuals, but we fully understand the intimate physiognomy and the desire to probe beneath the appearance. It is how we see ourselves. It is Vicki Walsh's message to each of us to know thyself. Socrates couldn't have said it better.