I am working on a client portrait at the moment and can only show the progress once the big unveiling has happened. So far that still looks at least a couple of months away.
I will have to post the visual stages after the event but I can for now voice the frustrations, concerns and breakthroughs that each stroke of the brush brings up.
I have known this couple for many years and without question knew they were both open to the challenges of sitting for a portrait. What I didn’t realise is how unprepared
I would be.
It soon dawned on me the responsibility you, literally, hold the in your hands to care for and value the way people perceive themselves. How do I handle their expectations while being brave enough to manage my own?
It all lands with the artists interpretation and skill, laying open the months of work to unknown reactions and scrutiny. An artist needs to be their own person and find themselves though their work, Picasso, Dali, Schiele and Dadd, themselves, themselves, themselves. Daring and brash to arrogance and madness but themselves.
I need to be brave and stay true to building idea ‘I’ have of who my sitters are….through my eyes, though my story to my truth.
This is gonna take guts. With years away from the art world, i need a powerful dialogue with myself to answer the passionate calling that seems to hover over and in me. This is my medium, this is my time to be …connected and free….a journey to me.
