Hedera: Portrait Making

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Portrait Making

I used to do lot of portraiture and while reading Katherine Tyrell's excellent blog Making A Mark this morning, I came across and was intrigued by her April 2011 post How do you share what you do as a painter? featuring American painter Rose Frantzen and her art project Portrait of Maquoketa Between July 2005 and 2006 Rose painted 180 individual portraits of local people in a public space. In the attached video link, she shares some of her techniques and talks candidly about the emotional aspects of the experience. I'm not a painter, but I was easily able to relate to many of her comments describing the level of emotional honesty and intimacy which can develop between the artist and sitter during the process. So much so, that I now feel inspired to revisit some of my old portraits... I made this drawing years ago in a crowded studio at art school. The sitter didn't make eye contact and remained in a "closed" seated position the whole time, yet I still feel a strong sense of personality when I look at this work...