Bryan Lewis Saunders is a performance artist born in Washington DC and living in and out of Tennessee. He started out by doing at least one portrait everyday. He started out doing all of this because he set out to look for experiences that might affect perception of himself. He soon then came up with the experiment “under the influence”. This experiment consisted off him ingesting or inhaling a different drug/intoxicant everyday. Then creating a new self portrait everyday to document the effects of his altered perception. In his collection he currently has over 8,000 self portraits which are all completely different.
In an interview with Jon Ronson he said ” I’ve done 8,200 portraits, everyday is different. Like snowflakes, DNA and fingernails, no two are the same”.
I really like the personal elements in his work. I love how each piece is completely different, no two the same. I just find his work do unique. I enjoy his use of bright colours. I think his work has really strong links to my own with the use of colour. I feel as though his use of colour makes the audience aware that he’s under the influence of drugs.
In his artwork series “Under the Influence” he took a selection of drugs
- cocaine
- Bath Salts
- marijuana
- lighter fluid
- xanax
Lauren Everitt Art 