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Master of Fine Arts (MFA) - Russian Academy, Living Master - Art Renewal Center, National & International Awards & Honors, Distinguished Private, Corporate, Government and Museum collections
Joined: Mar 2002
Location: NY - TN
Posts: 27
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Dear Linda,
Thank you for your reply.
About "falling in love" there are no two ways about it, for the sake of a great portrait we must look at each sitter "individually". Facing a new challenge of "discovering" the person, his/her individual features and character, that's what I call "falling in love". Let's just look at the masters of the past. An old, unrefined outcast would be treated by the artist gently and with the same attention as a young and beautiful woman.
That you can see in the works of Kramskoy, Repin, and more recently Annigoni, and many, many others.
When people ask me, "Who do you prefer to paint -children, women, men?" I simply answer "I love people". When they ask me "what is your style?" I answer "That depends on the person". I wouldn't paint a little girl the same way as an 80 year old man, or the hands of a piano player and the hands of a truck driver. Each portrait will have an individual approach, where the compositions and even the brush strokes wouldn't be the same. We have to search inside the person, and the only way to do it successfully is to get fascinated by this person. I believe, that this is what makes us, the portrait artists, different from let's say "non-artistic" people, is the ability to see others with passion.
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