See The Finished Portraits

I love how art has been a continual source of connection for me in building a community of friends and colleagues.  I would like to show you some very lovely portraits of beautiful women that I have drawn recently.  Two of these portraits were won with a bit of luck by the recipients, Cat Palmer and Eva Erickson, in the drawings I held during the Utah Pride Festival and the Utah Art Festival.  I knew Cat already through the Salt Lake art community.

The other two drawings were done as trades with prior acquaintances of mine, Stephanie and Sarah, but now I consider all of these women my friends.    There is something about the act of drawing someone’s portrait that lets us get to know each other better.  Of course we talk and laugh and chat about our lives during the session as we would on any other occasion, but something else magical happens.  Joining efforts in the creation of an artwork is a noble pursuit.  They were working just as hard as I was.  Holding still for an hour or two is not easy, even with breaks.  The hardest part about it is resisting the urge to talk the entire time, because it’s such a fun and playful space of connection, but I have to insist that we pause the conversation temporarily so that I can capture an accurate likeness.  It takes discipline on both of our parts.  But that’s not all.  Whatever energetic channel we tune into that allows me to magically capture personalities on paper, creates an uplifting experience for both of us.

All of the drawings turned out fantastic.  I am so grateful for my gifts in portraiture.  Capturing a likeness is one of the most difficult things for an artist to accomplish, and I have always done it with ease.  It’s like a visual language that I speak fluently.  I just have to remember to be true to myself and only do the kind of portraits that I really want to do.  Right now for me that is smaller mixed-media drawings of one individual at a time, live and in person.  Of course I can work from photographs and do sometimes for different reasons, but it’s not the same.  I have also done large grand oil paintings of siblings together in the past and for some reason, that was always excruciating for me and even burned me out.  My inner artist is very finicky about what he wants to do, and now I listen very carefully and try not to make him mad.  There are plenty of other artists out there who love painting the large family portraits.  I don’t have to corner that part of the market.  There is a nice cozy niche for what I do, which is constantly evolving.  These portraits will keep getting better and more complex as time goes by, but no matter what technique I happen to be using, the real beauty of it lies in the subject.  These are real people being recorded two-dimensionally in time, in a moment that will never exist again.  I didn’t invent their bodies, their features, their style, or their stories.  They are all unique and interesting creations of the Universe, which is the grandest artist of all.  Sure I could have just taken a photograph of them with my cell phone to immortalize them, but instead, I am the camera.  My eyes are like the lense and the shutter sending information to my brain, the processor.  My hands are like the printer, wielding a variety of pens, pencils, and charcoal to mark on the surface.  Instead of a dark room to develop an image, we have an art room, where perhaps in a similar metaphorical manner, light and shadow are exposed on a blank piece of paper in the shape of a human.  Their personalities can’t help but shine through after going through that process.  Whatever it is that makes it all happen, I still haven’t quite figured it out.  Having talent is one of those mysterious blessings in life that each of us have in some way.  We can either choose to nurture it or squander it.  I have done both at times and ridden the roller coaster of creative feast and famine, but art certainly has been a source of great joy in my life, and my gratitude for it keeps growing.

If you’d like to learn more about my portrait work, please click here.