Decade: Autoportrait '70 (Vinalhaven) is a print from Indiana’s Decade: Autoportraits, Vinalhaven Suite.
Regarding the series Indiana wrote: “A decade ago, in the early ’70s I began a series of paintings, autobiographical in intent, which, because they spanned the ten years of my life in the ’60s, I called Decade: Autoportraits. These grew to be three sets, or, 30 paintings in all, of differing sizes, which touched upon some of the important occasions, places and people who figured conspicuously in my life during that very tumultuous decade for an artist in America—truly a golden decade.
Upon coming to Maine to live permanently in the late ’70s I decided to record the more recent decade and the ten years which included part of each on the island of Vinalhaven in the Penobscot Bay.”
He also penned a statement explaining each individual print:
"The first print of the suite begins with the year 1970 as I had barely set foot in the building the previous year and it obviously works best numerically. Art has been the main theme of my life, having made the decision when I was six, but also in 1970 I began my 'Art' paintings and sculpture, which I hoped would be for this decade what love had been for the last. On a trip to visit the composer Virgil Thomson in New Hampshire I saw Mount Equinox for the first time with a friend named Michael."