Painting portraits has something pure and endearing to me. I wish everybody could experience it. From the wealthiest man I ever made a portrait of, to the bum on the street, as soon as somebody takes a seat in front of me, every mask falls away. This openness has value to me as a painter.
While I am able to judge people on the street pretty harshly, looking at their clothes, their behavior and their choice of spouse, I don’t do that when I am painting. Judging is a left brain trait. I guess we all do it. It is our monkey brain. We want to know if these people mean danger or fun to us and based upon our experiences through life, we think we know who those people are. We think we know.
It is just like learning to draw. You have to get rid of the way you store data in your personal hard drive. Because you don’t know. It is not about knowing, it is about observing what is real. Somebody I would think of as insignificant on the street, has a twinkle in her eyes I hadn’t seen before I start really looking at her. You cannot detect that on a superficial glance. You see it when you are looking for the positive in a person. Most people are good people, as humans. The bad ones get disproportionally more attention because they need the energy from other people.
Saturday June 8th, we, Northlight Studios in Asheville had an event in which people paid $100 for a 30 minute charcoal drawing from Heidi Hoffer or oil painting from me. The risk is fairly low, for us and for them. Some paintings turned out to be excellent, some could be better, but the idea is that there is an exchange of energy that is valuable. One guy in front of me had such a fun demeanor with lips curling upwards, that I felt gay just observing this. By detecting this and bringing it out made us both happy. He was reminded of his uniqueness, not his painful toenail.
We will do this again, and please be my guest,(model) or call me for a separate session.
Here is a tour of my studio, https://vimeo.com/931512569?share=copy
Northlight studio’s, 357 Depot street, Asheville
