Missouri artist Steven Wilson and his surrealist self portrait "The Hawthorne Effect"

This work is a self portrait done in the style of a surrealist Rorschach ink blot exam.  I used a mirror on the face of the Reaper (which I took from Longfellow's The Reaper and the flowers).  The back drop is set in water as if death is a kind of baptism.  The sickle is set in resin sand and silica sand coated in acrylic.  The blade represents gold (life).

I used acrylic paint as adhesive for the mirror onto the canvas.  I did place black paint on the back of the mirror.  The paint did seep through the cuts I had made and "bleed" into the front of the mirror.  I took the self portrait photograph in morning sun while angling my face into the mirror.

The Hawthorne effect is an experimental design term that deals with the phenomena of when subjects know they are being studied and therefore alter their behavior making the results of the experiment tainted.