The holidays were great. They left me well rested and amped up to get back to work. This weekend I was able to finish three new paintings – two of which I had started at the end of last year. The third was my first completed painting of 2014.
Working with the idea of non-traditional portraits, the two blue, square paintings were actually influenced by photographs of real people. With each there was a particular characteristic that I was drawn to that I wanted to emphasize. For the woman, it was her hair and lips and with the man it was the way his beard and hair made a circle around his entire face – so much so that you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Once I had the basic outline, I used pattern, repetition and lots of bold colors to highlight or take the place of facial features.
The circle painting, on the other hand, was not based on a photograph, but drawn entirely from my imagination.
The part I like the most about these three portraits is that the opportunity for a dialogue with the subject is lost. A lot can be said between two people without words, but when you also take away the ability to look into a person’s eyes you have no way to read them. I like the mystery of these three.
