Portraits Catalog

Impressions of a Viewer
Jean Mach

In literature, "character" is the term for a portrait, in words, of a human being. Characters may be round or flat, dynamic or static, stock, or stereotyped. We value most the word-portraits that, through the course of a novel or a story, give us a sense of three-dimensional, changing, unique people. Such characters can transcend the print medium and lodge in the mind of the reader as real, whole people-perhaps flawed, but intensely human and individual.

In paint, we expect a portrait to give expression to a human life, but only as it existed during the relatively brief encounter of the sitting. And, obviously, the canvas or paper is flat. Depth is an illusion, in paint, even more so than in literature. To a writer like me, the medium seems fundamentally at odds with the goal of presenting the complexity of a life, more suited to a momentary glimpse from a particular angle than to deep perusal from many perspectives. Yet the miracle is, of course, that good portraits do reveal character profoundly. Perhaps they do so by creating an interplay of characters, those of the subject, the artist, and the viewer, combining many individual angles of perception. Looking at Frank Born's portraits, a viewer is aware of the artist's character and values somehow interfused with those of the subject. Nuances of character are conveyed by minimal means, evoking emotional as well as intellectual response.

These portraits vibrate with empathy. As the subjects look out, down, or away, they draw the viewer in: it's like looking up through the thick branches of a tree and sensing the infinite in the glints of light. It seems that a direct gaze would give a viewer the easiest access to the character of the subject, and I found myself testing that theory. I was drawn in wherever the gaze went, and there was information, unique to that portrait, whatever the angle. The artist clearly makes no judgment about the sitter' s readiness to engage the world with a forthright look. Each portrait thus suggests a relationship, honest but respectful, between the artist and the subject. Revealed, yet mysterious, the subjects allow us to explore their psyches as we explore our own. When I consider Eugenia Butler in a Sling, for example, the tinge of gentle irony in her expression, her jaunty eyeglasses, and her flighty earrings reverberate in my mind, reminding me to face life with her equanimity.

The relationships between the sitter and the artist also take concrete form in the composition of figure and ground, and in the conversation of colors, in each painting. The settings for each portrait, including those that presume to be no more than painted canvas, define the person within an exterior space as eloquently as in an 18th Century portrait of a squire posed in front of his lands and livestock. In some paintings, subtly painted plain background, through its insistence on absence of detail or perspective, empowers the person's presence. For example, in Susan Herzig, the "nothing" of the setting reinforces the "presence" of the person. Nothing trivial is allowed to dilute or distract from her force. Like the jar in Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar, " she "[takes] dominion everywhere." So without place, but with space, we may see her presence more clearly. In other portraits, softly-washed halos cradle the figure against the world. Madeleine Spates and Jules Berman occupy, appropriately for young children, spaces that offer more comfort or protection. Thus each unique composition of space and figure is part of our understanding of the person: exactly what they need to breathe and we need to define them against the world, but no more.

Colors also indicate an unspoken communication between the subject and the artist. Flesh, the fundamental substance here, is always a complex working of color and suggests a tender but observant artist's eye. The combinations of colors in the ground and clothing generate energies that range from delicate to electric, capturing mood, manner, and disposition. Even before I have looked at a face, those colors have established some dimension of character: sweet, gypsyish, vibrant, serene. Again in Susan Herzig, even the willingness to dispense with color is meaningful. The sitter might give little thought the day of the sitting to the choice of clothing. But the artist seems to understand the subtle ways in which character is revealed through such choices and to develop his color palate, even the brushwork, for each painting through that understanding. Although the artist approaches each subject with his distinctive style, each portrait is nevertheless a fresh experience. The people painted are just ordinary people, but the paintings explore their extraordinary range of individuality.

The portraits of women are beautiful: that is the overwhelming impression, not to be mistaken with "the portraits are of beautiful women." These portraits capture an essence of femininity. Their loveliness often resides in the oppositions achingly apparent: dark and light; strength and fragility; edge and softness; purity and experience; pride and humility; isolation and intimacy. But these are not the oppositions of conflict that require resolutions and happy -or tragic -endings. Instead, they are contrast and counterbalance, the irreducible oppositions of the fully human. Because of the minimalist techniques, the women are often freed from a particular point in time. The start resonating in the mind with other women, traces of women of all ages beneath a very particular contemporary woman. Their eyes focus this complexity, suggesting lives lived, pain endured, wisdom found, perhaps at some cost. Some even allow us to see a hint of playfulness.

The portraits of men, with muted colors, perhaps a rounded shoulder or a relaxed spine, tend to quietude. They suggest, often, thoughtful men who occupy the space of the canvas with assurance but not dominance, anchored in a way that is distinct from the portraits of women. The slight turn of a torso or head, the angle of a forearm may convey comfortable resolution between the figure and the ground. The balance in the relationships here, between the man and the surroundings, between the intellectual and the physical man, and, by implication, between the artist and the subject, communicate the strength of rationality more than of muscle. These portraits of men distill, I think, an essence of their character, perhaps not always visible in daily life, but available through the quiet act of sitting.

A portrait of a child is tricky: it must not be cute or patronizing. It must capture the essence of a particular child even when character is still fluid, lacking the solidified physical clues given by the appearance of adults. The first two portraits, of two very young children, conjure the real magic of childhood, not the enervated Disney concept, through the fleeting gestures, postures, and expressions that are uniquely a child' s. Slight skewing, of the torso and the head in Jules and of the chair in Jacob, suggests a momentary equilibrium of childish energy. All the children's portraits convey this sense of the transitory-the precise angle of a shoulder or a knee, the narrative of a summer lawn chair or a beach, and the vivid colors all seem connected to a particular point of time, as if time in childhood has a different, more poignant value than it does in adulthood.

##

[ Artist's Note ]

[ Go back ]