United by a preoccupation with the thoughts and feelings that have inspired several series of works, Ebanks’ self-portraits hark back to a long lineage of self-reflection within the wider history of art. While stylistically Ebanks’ began his career producing realistic portraits in charcoal and graphite, these largely abstract, mixed media compositions capture the artist’s profile in progressively looser and more expressive ways.
While Y? - Live In My Head superimposes a speech bubble of thoughts over a simplified outline of the artist’s face, Remnants of the Artist dissolves the artist’s features to such an extent that only a ghostly echo of Ebanks’ head and shoulders remains.