Portraits

In 2013, I was invited to participate in a portrait exhibition. I hadn’t attempted portraits since my college days, but night after night, I sat and pondered my own face in a mirror propped beside my easel. I started with a 5 x7 canvas board. Soon, staring back at me was a woman with squiggly dark hair, wearing a black turtleneck and a heavily lidded expression, set against a background of bright dots. A second similar self-rendering followed, this one on a narrow slice of wood. 

From the beginning, I took a loose, painterly approach to my portraits, seeking an inventiveness more than a facsimile. I began to feel like I’d found some sort of groove with “Woman Dreaming of Sunset,” a portrait of an unidentified woman, no longer me. I followed the wood’s natural notches, including the scooped circle above my subject’s head. In the glow of its rich, warm colors, that orb could be a halo, bull’s-eye, flower, wheel or the sun. I’ve always liked the ambiguity and possibilities. That winter, I steadily added to my collection of portraits. And lately, I’ve been intrigued by portraits once again. Pre-Covid trips to Montreal inspired a series of isolated figures in wintry landscapes. I painted a few more in the deep days of the pandemic. Emerging from the lockdown, I started to add great color and more patterned flourishes to my newest portraits. The experimentation continues.