Museum Director
 

Gretchen Worden, former Director of the Mutter Museum (Philadelphia College of Physicians), oil on linen, 48" x 36"

Here is my latest commissioned work. It is a posthumous portrait of a dynamic, compassionate woman who devoted her career to the Mutter Museum. You may have seen her on the David Letterman Show; she appeared on the show three times over the course of several years. The Mutter Museum is a medical museum started by Thomas Dent Mutter in the 19th century with the donation of his collection. The collection includes human skulls and skeletons, preserved body parts with various diseases, conditions, or abnormalities, and old medical instruments. A plaster cast of Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, resides there (along with their preserved liver). The purpose of the museum is to preserve knowledge of, and to educate the public about human pathology and medical history. With funding from the city of Philadelphia, the present director has created an exhibit on the history and present dangers of lead poisoning. Personally I have always found the museum to be a fascinating place.

In the background of the portrait is the skeleton of a 7' 6" giant, and the skeleton of a 3' 6" achondroplastic dwarf. Ms. Worden isholding a lithotrite, an antique instrument used to enter the male bladder and crush bladder stones! :(

Here are a few more details:

What a wonderful painting! Her expression is as if she has something to share with us. Nice interaction between subject and viewer. The handling of the paint has a nice flow also. Great hands! I want to study those hands for awhile!

The life in your subject is just superb.

Alex,

Rembrandt lighting on a modern woman.

She looks as if she would gladly demonstrate the tool. The skeletons seems so amused, but then again it's not their problem anymore.

This is a wonderful portrait, serious, humorous and so refreshingly well painted.

Thank you, Tom and Mike! Life was what I was aiming for. When I'm doing a posthumous portrait I feel as though I'm bringing the person back to life. I think all portrait painters must feel this way.

All the people who knew her and shared their stories about her agreed that her smile was a very important thing about her. I wished I had known her, because watching her on the videos was a real experience. She had an incredible sense of humor. When she was on the David Letterman show, they fed off each others' humor. Amazing to watch! She could maintain a serious expression for quite a while, then she would get a gleam in her eyes and break into a wide smile or start laughing. After watching these tapes over several times, I became interested in the whole smiling process, especially the moment when she first got the gleam in her eye. I decided this was the moment I wanted to capture in my portrait. It had the potential energy.

Hey, Allan! You noticed the skeleton's reactions to the lithotrite! Hardly anyone noticed this. How about the hand of the giant? I couldn't resist putting my own weird humor into this painting.

Alex,

I love your sense of humor. That lithotrite even gives me the horrors.

This painting seems more painterly than many of your others, Was this a conscious choice? I am assuming that you had to work from a prior photo you were not able to set up yourself ( not always easy) and i imagine you just had a hoot deciding what to include in the composition. I really like the way you tell a story.

Richard,

I did leave the background more painterly, because I wanted it to be a little shadowy and mysterious. I thought the figure was just about up to my usual level of detail--but maybe I am not aware of what you are seeing.

The reference for her head came from a video. I froze the frame and worked from a print. The trouble was that it cut off the entire top of her head from her eyebrows up. She had the wrong hairstyle, so I borrowed a hairstyle and head top from another photo. The only trouble was, that photo did not show her in the same light so I had to invent the shine and color of the hair.

After I found the head reference (which had a nice light/shadow pattern, by the way, but was missing a lot of color and value information), I created a body by using two different models. I photographed them with an off-camera flash set up to create the same exact light/shadow pattern on the faces, so the face and body would be in the same light. One of the models was wearing Ms. Worden's jacket and earrings and holding the lithotrite. However she had to wear latex gloves to hold the lithotrite. The other model I chose because her height, figure, and hands were pretty close to Ms. Worden's. I made sure my angle (height) in relation to her head was the same as that in the "head shot" reference. To do this I had the model stand on two books to make her the same height, 5' 9". This model held an "instrument" jerry-rigged out of two screwdrivers. Both models wore black jackets and cream scoop-neck blouses, and black skirt or pants. (I chose to paint the skirt.)

The stance of the models, the tilt of the head, and the way they held the lithotrite, were taken from the videos of Ms. Worden on David Letterman. I watched the tapes of her very carefully and tried to have the models imitate her gestures and the way she moved.

This is my favorite of yours. Well done!

She's not the only one with a sense of humor, Alex!

I love the shimmering, moving light - at least, that is how it reads to me. The hands and instrument are done so well. And that mouth is about to move and say something interesting, I am sure.

Wow, not only is she beautifully painted, I LOVE the skeletons, their positioning, stance, etc. are an amazing component to the painting.

Marvin, Julie and Patty--thanks for your kind words.

The consensus from Ms. Worden's friends and colleagues was that the background should be kept plain, with one featured item from the museum's collection to represent the museum. The skeleton of the giant came to mind first, and then I snuck the dwarf in because it's in the same case as the giant and most people associate the two. I spent a long time in the museum observing how the expressions of the skeletons seem to change depending on the angle at which they were viewed. It was a lot of fun deciding which angle to paint them from. I wanted the three figures to be interacting. The skeletons began to seem like her friends, and i suspect she thought of them as such.

I was told by many people that Ms. Worden saw the humanity in everyone and appreciated all the variations of nature. There's a kind of mystery and wonder in science, and a connection between her and the skeletons. I think that was all in my mind as I was painting the "shimmery" air. (Julie, I like that word!)

Alex,

Amazing what you have accomplished considering the reference material you had too work with. No questions of the details...they are always well done. painterly referred to the brush stokes that appear to be confidently put down without trying to blend them with what lay underneath or along side. Well done.

Superb portrait, Alex! You have such mastery of your technique and ideas, and in this one I feel like you're riding on a wave of confidence and assuredness. To me, this painting is a pillar of contemporary portraiture making you definitely one of the very top portrait painters around.

A real masterpiece.

I have just come back from 3 1/2 weeks of vacation overseas with family which seemed like a lifetime of intense living and learning, and came back feeling like I wanted to shake off all the things that were hindering me in my art and seeing this one of yours was such an inspiration. A lot of art I saw in this recent trip seemed to be more in the line of art therapy - a getting-out of personal feelings and a kind of punching-the-cushion gestural mark-making. After watching Kenneth Clark's "Civilization" (a lovely revision of art history) I was struck by the professionalism of the painters of the past. A dedication to work and to service rendered to society and humanity. Art is a privileged career, but it is not a society-supported psycho-therapy. To have an income - to take people's money for the services we provide - there must be a respect for the clients, and so there must be a balance between belief and expression of in our own ideas, and a professional attitude toward the hard labour of recreating those ideas in paint. A gestural mark doesn't make it by itself - it needs a lot of painterly explanation. In the end we are workers like everyone else, and should be.

Your painting is a very fine example of this - the balance between original and passionate ideas and a dedication to the unavoidably hard work of creating them.

Me too!

Alex, this is stupendous! When I visited your studio and saw you at the beginning of this project, I just shook my head in disbelief than anyone could pull this off. You showed me your disparate reference images with the cut-out hair and masking tape. Not only did you pull it off, but it is arguably your most moving portrait, and a very successful one. You put a lot of humanity into this one. I love her LIFE despite the fact it's posthumous, one would never detect that; and I love your sense of humor in the interplay of the characters. Superb!

Garth

Fantastic work, Alex!
The efforts you exerted to create this piece show your level of professionalism and you have set an example for all of us and for that we are very grateful. You have combined the "technician" part of our work with your usual high level of artistry and the result is a posthumous portrait that brings the sublect "back to life", as it were, which is the ultimate aim of such a portrait.

Congratulations!

Incredibly personal. I too like the sense she is mid-sentence, which is a lovely way to handle a posthumous portrait.

Thanks, All!

Richard, I can't help but thinking how it is always better (incomparable) to have a living person in front of you when you are painting them! But I don't want to give the false impression that I had to work from a tiny snapshot with flat lighting. The videos provided me with some decent possibilities.

Thomasin, I like your point:

"Art is a privileged career, but it is not a society-supported psychotherapy." I've always felt that, If you express your feelings or ideas in a way that can only be understood by you on a personal level, or can only be understood if you explain what you're trying to do, then there is an ingredient missing. Art (in my opinion) needs to be both a personal expression and a way to touch others, to say something that is understood by the person looking at it. Moreover, I would want the viewer to enjoy the experience of looking at it.

Garth, I knew you were worried that I wasn't going to pull it off. All I can say is: it may have looked like a mess of disparate pieces, but it was all in my head! ;)

Carlos, I'm so glad you feel I've brought her back to life--my ultimate goal, as you pointed out.

Debra, I wish I could play the videos and show people on the forum how expressive Gretchen's face was. Potential energy is a powerful thing in art.

I love the movement. The figures are all in motion to me ... very nice indeed. Congratulations on a wonderful painting.

Judy,

Thanks very much! To be able to imply motion in a painting that stays still is a major goal for me, so I feel very honored that you feel this way.

Very nice
 

The subject matter and color arrangement bring Thomas Eakins to mind. I also see this image and think of an artist in love with her work.
James

Thank you so much, James! Eakins is one of the artists whose work I have admired for a long time. And, yes, you are right that I do love my work, though I never am satisfied with what I make. As Picasso said, the next one is the masterpiece. I never give up hope. ;)