Portraits

For that last couple of months I have started working on portrait again. I started with my family members, and since my immediate family is only 3 other people aside from myself, I naturally ran out of subjects quickly. So I opened the door to friends and relatives, asking if anyone would want a portrait done. I had a friend that I have known for some time, who has been in and out of my life since high school. And he asked, so I went ahead and began working on the first piece. Being that he is a really great subject (objectively) I used him for more than one. Now that I have completed or nearly completed those two, I have started on another of my Grandma.

I came to a point tonight when I had to sit back and ask, "why these people? why not strangers?" Back when I first started toying with the idea of doing portraits while I was still in university I looked at the approach to so many done by masters. There were guys like Schiele who used prostitutes. There were those who used their wives and mistresses. Some used their children. Some used the geriatrics. Some used the invalids. It all boils down to the same thing though... where their hearts lay at the time. "Where your effort lies, there your heart will be also."

Whether or not I want to admit it, these people illicit a response from me. I know that my family is more important to me than anyone or anything else, so I understand why they were chosen. I guess it boils down to my choice to pictorially describe them. These people all mean something. (In case you didn't know, things mean a great deal to me even if I don't advertise it.) If anyone were to look back on the lineage of my previous portraits, they would see that the people in them were special to me in a way that I didn't really know how to describe in any other way. I mean I can say the words, but it fails to convey fully all that I think and feel. There was even a time when I did a portrait of one who tugged at my heart strings, but who I also knew would never reciprocate the longing. I titled it " Unreqited love." Seems silly now knowing that I was 19 and thought I had an idea of what that word meant. Words fail me often. I try to pinpoint the depth of all that surrounds this one thing.. and it never fully gets there.

The people I keep in my portraits are people I want to keep around. Lately I don't get to see them much anymore, and this way, they are here if only in spirit. Sometimes that is enough.