PORTRAITS

Most to all of the portraits displayed on this page are done from life. The sitting usually takes the better part of four hours and the process is focused, intended to create calm, and is extraordinarily intimate. It is rare to have an uninterrupted segment of time to spend with a person, much less one who is being intensely watched and recorded. The mandatory stillness is what grounds the experience both for the painter and the subject; what is most important to capture is the essence and volumetric identity of the personality at hand. While a portrait contains the normal massing of eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, brow, and hair the endless and intricate variations determined by genes and life experience ground the artist in the method and the experience has become one of her preferred art forms.