Self-portraits and world portraits

“Portrait 1 (ink on paper, digital print), by Ellen Driscioll, in her show “Splinter,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Oct. 5-Oct. 30.

The gallery says: “‘Splinter’ is an intimate and probing array of self-portraits that create intricate matrices, interlacing her inner life with maps, charts, and images of an outer world undergoing constant change. While recovering from a rare brain tumor that initially rendered her unable to walk or see and prompted visual hallucinations, Driscoll began to draw herself in the starkest and most self-revealing manner. Over time, Driscoll began to interweave the self-portraits with images of melting glaciers, oil refineries, forest thickets, and birds, reflecting the artist’s long artistic preoccupation with global warming and environmental degradation. In each image, Driscoll’s face indelibly captures a vivid sense of a world and self, both intertwined and slipping away.”