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I rarely attempt to paint people. When I was younger it was because I had no interest in painting them. Later it was because I'd never developed the skill to do it well. Landscape is completely different, better suited to the way I approach painting; it's where I find the most fluent and flexible poetic language. When I paint people, even modest success involves an incredible amount of luck, with regard to where the brush falls and how the marks add up.
The image shown here is only one quarter of the full panel, so smaller than a 3" x 5" card. It is strange to me that such a tiny area, brushed roughly with brown and beige and blue and black paint might be able to convey a sense of personality, beauty, gravity.
The image shown here is only one quarter of the full panel, so smaller than a 3" x 5" card. It is strange to me that such a tiny area, brushed roughly with brown and beige and blue and black paint might be able to convey a sense of personality, beauty, gravity.
This image is a detail, only one quarter of the full panel, so smaller than a 3" x 5" card. It is strange to me that such a tiny area, brushed roughly with brown and beige and blue and black paint might be able to convey a sense of personality, beauty, gravity. The way I work, even modest success involves an incredible amount of luck, with regard to where the brush falls and how the marks add up.
I rarely attempt to paint people. When I was younger it was because I had no interest in painting them. Later it was because I'd never developed the skill to do it well. It can be crushing to want to paint the grace and spirit you see in a face and to fall miserably short. So I rarely try. Landscape is a completely different language, especially the way I approach it. That is where I find the most fluent poetic language. But I secretly wish I could paint people in a way that showed what I feel when I read T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday passage about the Lady of Silences. This is the closest I've come, done on the second week of the tour, on a morning when I had the paints out and happened to catch myself with my guard down.