Portraits
Portraits are the most
difficult, most frustrating, most controversial, and yet the least
satisfying of all the things I do. I would say that I hate doing
them, except that tomorrow somebody will ask me to do one... and I
would be on record demonstrating a negative attitude. Otherwise I
would say that I hate doing them.
NEVER THE LESS, we have to
do them. There was a time, and I believe we are returning to that
paradigm, where portraits were the most popular kind of art. Few
people owned a landscape of any consequence, or any kind of genre
art, but everybody had a still life or a portrait somewhere in their
house. The still lifes were usually badly done vases of
chrysanthemums or sunflowers, or some awful thing from somebody's kid
in art school. But the portraits were pretty good. And that's because
a portrait artist cannot be a bad portrait painter. You can wing it
with flowers and clouds and 70% of most landscapes, but with
portraits, you cannot get anything even a little wrong... or your
client will not be pleased, and probably will not pay for your work.
At least not happily.
This book jacket cover required a lot of reading and research,
to create likenesses of Comanche Chief Ten Bears and Jesse Chisholm.
1984
So maybe it's not the
doing of them, its the sour gut I hate, which I have until my
customer has seen and smiled upon the likeness I have painted of
their loved one. I'm not sure that I have ever been totally pleased
with any portrait I have done. Even if the customer liked it, and
paid me, and walked happily away. Nothing you do should cause you
that much anxiety. And the anxiety is that no matter how much I
strive, I have never been very good at portraits... but I had
customers who begged me to just try one time for them. And I hate
disappointing a customer worse than painting a portrait.
Nell Cushman, by Vera Reeks. An outstanding Houston portrait artist, Vera inspired me for a lifetime with this excellent likeness of my grandmother.
I have known some
excellent portrait artists. In fact as a child, one lived in the
neighborhood and trained my mother how to paint. She painted from life. I have learned the hard way that painting a subject from life is the far more preferable approach. But I was too young to
know about any of that, and missed a great opportunity to learn
from a true master. But there was another reason that portraits never came
easily, and that was that I never really wanted to be good at them.
Portraits were just faces. Boring. People just sitting there. I wanted to
paint happenings, grandiose panoramas. Portraits were for sissies.
A bronze,life-sized portrait of Harvey Mitchell, Bryan pioneer
1998
But I did them... because
I liked to eat. And over the years I have done more than I ever
planned. Portraits of wives, young couples, an airline pilot, a
newspaper editor, and a few family members. You see, my in-laws were
the first audience who demanded portraits- Art which one could relate
to; Portraits of parents and grand parents and grand children. And
then there were the folks who wanted a portrait of the their dog,
their horse, or their first house. I've done them all.
An early attempt at portraiture in watercolor, of my girl friend. Now my wife, this profile of Linda has stood the test of time.
1974
"Three Young Texans"
1979
This watercolor of my niece was my first attempt to paint a portrait as a major work... The painting gave the gallery owner the creeps... but my wife loved it so we just kept it.
A good friend asked me to paint his brother, a handsome airline pilot, as a gift to him. He had since fallen intp ill-health and was confined to a wheel chair. The portrait was to be a tribute top his sterling patriotism and service.
Finally, a Bryan businessman asked me to do a magnificent, near LIFE-SIZED portrait of his beautiful wife, in her wedding glory, which he planned to hang over the gorgeous fireplace in their grand new home... within a couple of years, they were divorced and it was gathering dust in her garage. Lesson? There were actually several. Women do not want a GIANT PICTURE OF THEMSELVES to look at every day... and if the marriage goes badly, a wedding dress only becomes a awful reminder. And nobody has room for such a monstrosity... no matter how much love was put into it. The wife did not want it, and especially after the divorce... even if significantly cut down. That was when I swore off any more portraits.
I had sworn off portraits
after my gargantuan alley mural in Navasota, where I designed about
seventy-five feet of ten foot musicians.
Mance Lipscomb sings down Blues Alley in Navasota, 24 hours a day.
Then my preacher asked me to
do just one more. A portrait of his favorite Confederate general. It
took me a year to get up the gumption to just agree to to do it...
and another year to figure out how to immortalize Stonewall Jackson,
a man who was the second most famous behind Robert E. Lee for
rebelling against the United States and defending the South's
tradition of slavocracy.
"His Destiny and His Legacy"
Before he was a famous Confederate general, Jackson was
a Military College administrator who taught Sunday School to the
neighborhood slaves. He considered it his most important project, even
sending his wages as a Confederate general to support the mission back home.
And here is the point, in so doing, I
learned a ton. About Stonewall Jackson, about myself, and about how
to paint a portrait. Up until that last portrait, I had never really
applied my artistic vision. I had just painted, drudged my way
through the assignment, like taking out the garbage. Sometimes, an
inspiration would overtake me, to paint a portrait, but one which
came out of my creative bank rather than a commission. In these I
proved to myself that I could do them. They gave me the nerve to
accept commissions... and thus eat more often.
My life-sized bronze sculpture of Marshal Frank Hamer in Navasota.
My "Stonewall moment" was
after painting for a living for almost forty years. That last
portrait taught me to do something I had always tried to practice, in
every other subject I rendered. To first know it, then love it, then
sing from my heart... whatever it was. I gave the preacher a serious
surprise, a Stonewall he had only read about, a man he could admire
and communicate with and understand... and yes, even love. So let me
save you some time. If you are an artist, and you think you hate
portraits...
My mother Margaret Cushman. Artist, antique dealer,
and community organizer. The portrait I put off for three decades.
Special thanks to Rebecca Terry!
After many years of avoiding the challenge, I recruited Rebecca Terry, an accomplished local portrait artist, to walk me through a decent portrait of my mother... who had been deceased 35 years. She was a great inspiration for me in many ways, and I dared not get into it, without knowing I could "paint my way out of it." Becky was a great help to me, and so finally I had the one portrait I thought I would never have... and cherish. It was worth it, for no other reason than it was theraputic to memorialize her, and to change my definition of myself... even though I had painted several major works before which were "portraits."
One was one of my first serious attempts to conquer the portrait. Here I took an old daguerreotype as the inspiration, and brought a young Victorian maiden to, life...
"Eliza Rae's First Dance"
Life-sized portrait of a Brazos bottom cotton picker... part of a series which wraps around the elevator at the Star of the Republic Museum. I had a face in my mind... and so I painted her from memory. She had to have a strong character, hard but not harsh, controlled in her life but in control of her immediate world... I drew her face from my subconscious, and afterwards realized I had painted our nanny we loved while growing up... The lady was dear Annabell! Strangely, doing something I found difficult and unpleasant became a labor of love... in the right conditions.
This raises a couple of questions.
Should we ever turn down work, just because it seems undesirable to us?
Might we be cheating ourselves out of a valuable experience?
Should we understand that our creative genius does best when it is under a
little stress?
I painted "The Bridesmaid" for a local wine label competition... it was not well received... but it was another attempt to get past the portrait boogaboo.
"The Bridesmaid"
Some of the most gratifying works I have done were... portraits. They were hard, and even grueling projects. But I am so glad I did them now. I wish I could say it was maturity or wisdom that guided my decisions, but it was not. But it was a decision...
Years ago, I told God that I was terrible at running my life, and I was going to stop being so goal oriented, and just accept what he put in my path each day... I quit turning down things that i did not want to do. As you can see, God saw things in me that I never imagined. Faces. Personalities. Legacies. Touching lives and telling their stories for generations to come. As only portraits can do.
This stuff may or may not sell... but I am having a blast!
