Brian Saunders Draws Portraits of Himself while High on Drugs

On March 30th 1995, Brian Lewis Saunders decided to draw a self-portrait every day. He now has thousands of portraits, all collected in hard cover notebooks. Some of these portraits were created while under the influence of a variety of drugs. The artist sought out different drugs with the intention of drawing a portrait of himself while under the influence. Taking drugs day after day had ill effects on the artist, who claims that he nearly gave himself brain damage. He continued the experiment under medical supervision, spacing his drug use to give his brain a break.

The drugs chosen by Saunders range from marijuana and magic mushrooms to xanax and cocaine. The differences between each self-portrait are a reflection of the effect of the drugs. Hallucinogenic  drugs like hash and magic mushrooms inspired the artist to paint psychedelic patterns and designs into the art work, expressing not only what the artist was seeing, but how he was feeling. Drugs that made him feel aggressive and confident, like cocaine, influenced his art style and inspired him to draw dark, heavy lines into the portrait.

Besides creating a self-portrait each day, Brian Lewis Saunders is involved in a number of artistic projects, including performance art projects and music projects. He aims to approach the world from the opposite direction to everyone else, which is why he is involved in stand-up tragedy instead of stand-up comedy and his series of self-portraits depict the world in himself instead of the other way round. Visit Brian Lewis Saunder’s website for more art and for more information about this artist, read this interesting interview on vice.com