iNational Portrait GalleryWest End
Artist Focus: Issy Wood: Self-Portraits
Free display of intimate self-portraits by British American artist Issy Wood, a series begun in 2020, in Room 32 on Floor 1.
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In one enormous painting, Issy Wood sips a Diet Coke through a face mask. In others she squashes her cheek against a mirror, bleeds from an eyebrow and frames her face with plastic stick-on monster fingers. Best known for painting Diet Coke cans, antiques and leather coats, Wood has turned the same close-cropped, soft-focus eye on herself.
The series began in 2020 as a stand-in for a magazine photographer. She paints from phone selfies, and each one takes her a few days, which is roughly how long you spend deciding whether to post yours. This room, the first of the Gallery's Artist Focus displays, hangs self-portraits, seven never shown before, beside two pictures of her as a child.
The Guardian's Eddy Frankel called them "weird, suffocating, intimate things" and Wood "the ultimate zillennial painter". The catch is the mood: one painting has her mid-sob, though he found humour among the misery. It's free, in Room 32 on Floor 1, and the Gallery stays open until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays.
Look for
The Diet Coke face mask
Look for the enormous canvas where Wood sips a Diet Coke through a goopy, wet face mask.
The mirror
Wood squashes her cheek against a mirror, so her face appears twice, twisted out of shape.
The monster fingers
Plastic stick-on monster fingers frame her face, the moment Frankel read as Wood admitting it's all a bit overblown.
The childhood pictures
Two pictures of Wood as a child, all smiles and giggles, against a room of glum adult faces.
The mid-sob painting
Wood caught mid-sob, blurry-eyed and disconsolate.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want light relief: the Guardian found most of these paintings miserable and suffocating.
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Image credits
9
- Artist Focus: Issy Wood: Self-PortraitsSelf portrait 71, 2025 by Issy Wood © Issy Wood. Courtesy the Artist, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, and VeneKlasen, New York and London. Photo: Damian Griffiths.
- Renoir and LoveCourtesy of National Gallery
- Yinka Shonibare and Thomas Gainsborough: A ConversationCourtesy of National Gallery
- Art deco: the golden age of poster designCourtesy of London Transport Museum
- National Portrait GalleryIstvánka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National GalleryCarlos Delgado / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- London Transport MuseumColin Park / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Courtauld GalleryAnthony O'Neil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Churchill War RoomsJenny Poole / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0