In search of specificity
Portraiture isn’t easy—despite what the academies (and the surprising modern-day heirs to the academies) would have you believe.
I can paint a picture of an anonymous face as well as the next figurative artist. It’s a relatively easy thing to do. But pushing paint around on a canvas until it looks like one particular face, now that’s a challenge! And the struggle to make a collection of features into the likeness of a real person is a big part of what makes portraits so compelling.
Last summer, I started this painting of a little girl named Lily.
As I always do, I began by building up layers, looking for the forms of Lily’s face.
At this point in the process, everything seemed to be going swimmingly.
I was putting down marks and adjusting based on what I’d done.
I was making it up as I went along!
Then, suddenly, nothing seemed right.
I’d lost the spontaneity that is Lily, and, what’s more, I came to see that the source image I’d chosen could never give me the directness that I liked so well about her.
So I started over completely.
It’s not something I do a lot in the course of painting a portrait, but I don’t shy away from it if a work needs it.
I could have made a perfectly lovely picture of a little girl, but that wasn’t the point.
I was searching for one particular little girl in my brushstrokes.
And I wasn’t going to stop until I found her.
As I was working on this painting, I received a query from a stranger, a potential client. In his email, the patron asked me how I guarantee likeness in a commissioned work.
Many portraitists will remake a painting until the client okays the work, and these painters usually indicate on their website that they are willing to do so. Perhaps this man was looking for a promise like that from me.
I don’t give that guarantee on my page about commissioning me or anywhere else on my site for two reasons:
1) That promise is not useful to the patron-artist relationship in the least.
2) Painting a portrait of a subject on commission does not mean showing the client the exact same version of the subject as she-he sees—it’s neither possible nor desirable. A portrait is the artist’s understanding of the subject, not the client’s.
I responded to the potential client by pointing him to Snow Days, a series of portraits of local television news personalities that I created a few years ago. I told him that if he recognized the subjects of those portraits he would very likely be satisfied with the likeness I would make for him.
It’s delicate business, painting portraits. Not every artist is willing to make the subject of the painting as important as the painting itself, but I happen to think that doing so makes for a better work of art.
Gwenn Seemel
Lily
2008
acrylic on canvas
25 x 20 inches
(detail below)
Most of art can be judged based on two criteria: the piece’s overall aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional value along with the quality of the craftsmanship in the work. These rules for judging a work of art are fairly lax. They allow plenty of room for interpretation, and they’ve given birth to many an art piece that the majority of viewers wouldn’t deign to give that title.
In portraiture, there is, by definition, less of that. Where an artist might stop because she-he is tired of working on a piece or has lost the thread of the work or simply has no more time to put into a painting, a portraitist cannot stop. As an artist works on a likeness, there’s no room for “good enough” because, in addition to the usual criteria, portraiture is subject to a third standard: a portrait must resemble its subject.
A portrait is a painting with a distinct purpose, and, like a person who has a sense of where she-he is going, a portrait is lot more interesting that your average, bland, no-reason figurative work.
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CATEGORIES: - Process images - Practice - On portraiture -
leith Ridley...
Very interesting article, very interesting style..thanks for sharing it!
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