Portraits
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Featured
Fine Art Giclee on Paper or Canvas
Limited edition of 150
16” x 11.25”
$250.00
Custom enlargement available
Fine Art Giclee on Canvas
Limited Edition of 150
14” x 10.5”=$275
21" x 15.75"=$425
31.5" x 23.75"=$625
Custom enlargement available
“One of, if not the most important condition in my painting a picture is that something about the subject calls to me, makes my head turn to look at it, draws me to it. In other words, it reaches out to me rather than me deciding that I am interested in it. So when then I go to it, I’m curious to find out what has caught my interest. In this spirit of curiosity, I am open to discovery and discovery is always about something new and unknown. It is somehow like it was supposed to happen yet it takes courage to approach and ask someone to allow you to paint or draw a portrait of them. Fortunately, the call is often stronger than one’s self-doubt.
Karim was working at the Nanette & Romare Bearden Art Gallery in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten. I asked if she would allow me to paint her portrait and she agreed. I came on the appointed day and she was sorry to inform me that a tourist ship was unexpectedly in port and she would be too busy for us to work, and would I come another day. I was almost more relieved than disappointed. Portraiture is often an intimidating undertaking, but I was there and ready so I said, “Why don't we work until the people come, and then I will stop.” She stood in the doorway waiting while we talked and somehow her gaze, her gesture, her jewelry and the color of her dress and surroundings, her eyes, everything was enveloped in a timelessness. I hardly remember actually painting and we were done by the time her visitors arrived. It was as if I had been given a beautiful gift. “
Fine Art Giclee on Canvas
Limited Edition of 150
14” x 9.75”=$250
21" x 14.75"=$375
31.5" x 22"=$575
Custom enlargement available
I have painted many self portraits throughout my 60 year career as an artist,
from art school to last week, young and old, and more than one in any given year in
drawings, charcoal, pencil, ink, watercolor, oil and etching.
Not vanity, just looking and leaving a trace of the changes in my body,
feelings and state of mind. Portraiture is a record for posterity.
It is evidence of how life has molded us.
It is a search to understand who we are, a way of reconciliation,
a trace left of our inevitable journey until we are no more.
It is perhaps, as history prompts us to think,
a way to some degree of immortality.
That is what I think portraiture confers and has conferred on
all individuals whose portraits have survived through the centuries.
We know what they looked like, dressed like and
we can see and sense their characters,
yet though they are gone, they are still with us.
This is not the reason for the portrait.
That reason is more immediately related to live life,
but is nonetheless, the result of the transmission of the likeness and
spirit through an artistic medium to the future.
Self portraits are also necessary if one is to do portraits of others,
not only as a test of ability but of objectivity.
Truth, detachment, honesty are tested in the auto portrait - t
he portrait of self, and self is best portrayed through objectivity,
through the understanding that we are physical, emotional, intellectual,
and most important of all, that we are spiritual beings.
Our deepest reality is that we are not material beings only.
That which exists beyond our physical lifetime is who
we really are and portraiture attempts to help us understand this profound truth.