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Lisa, my knee jerk reaction to him is ( not so nice either) can you fling a bunch of colors on a canvas and talk about the spirit that moved you as you did it? Yeah, I thought so, could he paint a portrait if he wanted to? Probably not.
I'm not saying all contemporary artists are this way, but in my limited experience it usually turns out that while they are wildly creative people they generally couldn't paint a portrait if they tried. I recently had a conversation with a very talented and successful local water color artist. We talked about precisely the attitude that you got from that gallery owner. Her theory was the same as mine, she admitted that she was extremely jealous of artists that were able to paint people, especially the ones that truly captured the essence of that person. She, as an art teacher, felt that she could teach her students to paint everything from spatter paintings to landscapes, but when it came to painting a portrait very few were capable. Sounds to me like your gallery guy has a few sour grapes.
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