Family and Friends: 100 Twenty Minute Portraits
100 TWENTY MINUTE PORTRAITS
I am excited for the opportunity to display the entire body of work, and feel it makes for a dynamic and interesting exhibition. The paintings are of individuals, but when displayed together the individual is lost within the tonal sea of faces. The progression of the paintings reflect the learning process I experienced while completing the project, as well as my relationships with the various sitters, which makes for interesting comparisons.
This body of work includes portraits of family, friends and acquaintances who agree to sit as live models for twenty minutes as I complete their painting. While the project initially aimed to improve my technical skill in regard to portraiture, it has evolved into an exploration of the relationship between the sitter and the painter. Specifically, I became interested in blurring the individual sitter as a form of self-portrait. The action of painting a portrait in itself is intimate – looking, studying the features and finding ones character. When do the facial features of a face become more than features but a step beyond the individual? When does the painting become a portrait? How much of the portrait is an expression of the artist than of the sitter? When does the individual disappear into the masses? Furthermore, I began to explore how the painting itself reflected in my perception of the individual’s character, as well as my relationship with them.
This project was started on November 16, 2012 and finished on February 21, 2016 (approximately 3 years). The finished project includes 100 paintings - 77 different people, 37 males, and 40 females. The portraits are painted from a French easel, which allows for the versatility of painting in various environments while having all necessary materials available. They are painted on 9”x 12” gessoed paper using a limited color palette of acrylic paint, including Titanium White, Mars Black, Indian Red and Yellow Ochre.