BEHIND THE SCENE: FRANK
The concept for a portrait can come about in any number of ways. For an Academic or Executive Portrait, the parameters tend to be more clearly defined. Such Portraits present the sitter at their most distinguished, with elements that describe their professional achievements, such as Doctoral Degrees, awards, or books authored by the sitter. However, informal, family portraits tend to offer wider scope of mood, wardrobe, and narrative, and the decision of how to portray the subject can be allow for more experimentation.
Such was the case with this Portrait that I painted of a lovely gentleman by the name of Frank, whom I initially met socially, while I was living in Berlin. When Frank learned I was a portrait artists, he confessed he'd always wanted to have his portrait painted, and as his 50th birthday approached, he said he had been thinking about it more seriously.
Frank visited me at my studio and we discussed the portrait Frank hoped to see. I also took some preliminary images of him, to familiarize myself with his facial features, and see which angles worked best as graphic, two-dimensional representation. Frank was a very successful Physician as well as a soon to be published author. One of the first insights I gleaned was that, despite the fact that Frank lived a relatively fabulous life, of travel and social engagements, and was considered by his many friends to be a fun loving Gadfly, he saw himself quite differently, and hoped the portrait might capture the more introspective aspects of his nature.
We scheduled our first Formal Photo Sitting within the week. I arrived at Frank's Penthouse flat, set up some lights, and went about trying to capture the images he'd described. Frank wished to be portrayed holding a favorite book which he felt was instrumental in shaping his character. We tried five or six setups that day, with two wardrobe changes. In between setups, we chatted.
Like many highly accomplished people, Frank held himself to a very high standard. Frank told me that much was expected of himself and his two siblings, when they were children, and all three went on to become Doctors. And while he'd lived a charmed life, he seemed to feel that much of it was lived in service of meeting the expectations of others. In the final photo setups, Frank was seated on a sofa, in front of a bookcase which was filled with bound editions of Nobel Prize winning Literature. Because it was getting late and we were both weary with fatigue, it was decided that if we opted for that final composition, I would return to photograph the bookshelf, with books hand selected by Frank.
Later that night, back in my studio, I studied those images in minute detail, trying to work out every aspect of the portrait I might paint. Certainly, I'd gotten ample source photographs, upon which I could base two, or even three, portraits. As I poured over the images from the final setup, I saw something I hadn't noticed before, in a photograph I just happened to shoot. There, among the many crisp white Nobel Prize bound editions of 'serious literature' was the bright fuschia book jacket of a biography of Audrey Hepburn. Frank's "guilty pleasure" I thought to myself. I was instantly reminded of Maureen Stapleton's role in the film INTERIORS, by Woody Allen, in which the principle characters (three sisters) live lives of quiet desperation, as each manifests the burden of their mother's uncompromising perfectionism.
The film was Woody Allen's first attempt at drama, and was his homage to Ingmar Bergman. Photographed by Gordon Willis, the mother -- played brilliantly by the divine Geraldine Page -- is an Interior Decorator, with an obsession for neat, neutral, monochromatic spaces. All the characters wear bland whites, beiges, and grays, as if they are nothing more than elements of design within their mother's world. I saw a parallel in the life of Frank, who had promised himself that upon entering his fifth decade, he was going to start living more selfishly. And thus, a concept was born.
I invited Frank back to my studio to pitch my idea. I told him I wanted to paint a portrait of him with minimal color and to utilize those Nobel Prize 'bound editions' as a metaphor for the imprisonment he'd felt, living up to the expectations of others. Frank loved the idea and told me that those damned books had been required reading when he was a child and he'd thought many times of burning them. I said to him "You may be 50 years old, but you're still the Best Little Boy in the World."
I'd already gotten excellent images of Frank's face with similar lighting, so I was confident that with images of his body and the bookcase, I could construct the image we both wanted. I wanted to present the bookcase "head on", with as little perspective distortion as possible, to avoid the dynamism of diagonal lines. Instead, I wanted the books to suggest a kind of stasis and feel almost like prison bars. We arranged the bookshelves
can be a bit more rigid than
Frank was commissioned by the man himself, as a his Marylou was commissioned by her son, Nelson, for the occasion of her 80th Birthday. While there were many challenges in the making of this painting, I'm quite pleased with the final result.
Nelson and I began our discussions while he was living in Maryland and I in Berlin. I was preparing to move back to the United States after living in Europe for several years. The first issue we were to encounter was one of time. The Portrait had a fixed deadline of February 20, 2011, as it was to be unveiled at Marylou's 80th Birthday Celebration. I would not even be in the States until September 2010. And while five months would ordinarily be adequate to complete one portrait, I was working on two prior commissions, while I went about trying to find an apartment with adequate space to have a Home Painting Studio (in addition to all the other tribulations of moving, setting up a Studio, with lights, easel, computer monitors, tables, etc can take weeks of work).
Nelson and I met and scheduled the Photo Session with his mother the moment my plane landed in DC. Together, we drove over an hour to the Virginia Suburb where Marylou was living. Making the issue of time all the more pressing, was the fact that Marylou would be leaving Virginia, early the next morning, to spend several weeks with her Daughter in Hawaii. When we arrived at her home, Marylou looked lovely, having had her hair done, and wearing full makeup and a long, elegant, purple satin dress (satin is an extremely easy fabric to render in Oil Paint and a realistic effect happens with minimal work). The only issue was that her Condominium was awash in furniture with virtually no place for me to set up lights and the (enormous) camera I would be using to photograph her, which required a minimum of 6 feet distance.
Meeting and then instantly photographing a total stranger for something as personal as a portrait is already less than ideal. Add to that, the fact that Nelson and I had to relocate much of Marylou's furniture into adjacent rooms. As we did this, I performed the Herculean Task of "casually" chatting with Marylou, attempting to put her at ease, while frantically attempting to gain some window of insight into her true character, that I might incorporate it into the portrait. Marylou was quickly growing exhausted from the stress of having her photo taken, as seeing well as her orderly home turned upside down.
Nelson had only TWO requests about the portrait: that I include one of his mother's hands and that it not be wider than 20 inches in width. Those two parameters already meant that the portrait would not be a simple 'Head and Shoulders' composition, and that Marylou would be about half of life size. One thing about Marylou's character which was immediately apparent, was the role her Faith in GOD had played in her life. Her home was filled with Religious Iconography, including a beautiful hand painted Wooden Crucifix, and an exquisite image of The Virgin Mary, in the Naïve Style of Painting, of which Marylou's own Sister was a noted practitioner.
Ordinarily, when photographing someone for a portrait, I will first take 'Test Shots" with a variety of wardrobe, lighting, and poses, to zero in on the most flattering portrayal I can achieve. But on this day, despite the fact that I still hadn't gotten any deep insight into Marylou's character, and taking into account the space limitations, as well as sensing Marylou's growing fatigue, I put the lights in the only place I could and positioned Marylou on a simple Chaise and took approximately 200 photos before she was ready to stop. Although we'd initially spoken about my painting Marylou in "Undefined Space" (meaning a plain background), I made certain to get Reference Photos of the Virgin Mary Painting and asked Marylou to mimic the hand gesture of the Virgin, "just in case" I decided to go with a more elaborate composition. Already, the idea of casting Marylou as a sort of "Mirror" of the Virgin Mary, was giving me some inspiration.
After Nelson and I put all or Marylou's furniture back into place, the three of us drove to the home of Nelson's younger Brother, to have dinner with his family. I was beyond impressed with Nelson's two young Nephews, who were very close in age (I'm guessing 8 and 10) yet had not one whiff of Sibling Rivalry. The entire family are highly intelligent (Nelson and his Brother are Professors and one of his Sisters is a Doctor), but I wasn't prepared to have two Pre-Teen Boys educate me on American Civil War History and the various Weapons used by the Soldiers.
During that most enjoyable evening, I really began to understand who Marylou truly was...and she was quite a remarkable woman. She told me many stories from her life, growing up in Colombia, a job she loved as a young Television Reporter and how she gave it up to raise her children. She also told me about some very tough times, like when her husband essentially abandoned her with 4 children, and how she had to fill the void he left behind. Through it all, Marylou spoke again and again about the importance of her faith in GOD and how she would pray to the Virgin Mary for strength.
Marylou's stories, as well as the impression of the entire family, reverberated through my head as I sat alone that night, reviewing the many photographs I had taken of her. And while the images I'd gotten were perfectly adequate, and Marylou looked lovely and relaxed in most of them, I found myself looking PAST her in the images and thinking about the many (distracting) elements caught in those photographs which were not intended to be part of the painting. Most notably, a corner table, awash with family photos.
I had the unshakable feeling that i couldn't possibly adequately portray Marylou, without somehow referencing the central role her children had played in forging her character. I phoned Nelson to see if we might have a SECOND photo session after his mother returned from Hawaii. He said it might be a month before we could coordinate it. And even though that was quite a considerable amount of time to lose, I didn't feel right beginning a painting from a compromised concept. And so, I waited.
The Second Photo Session was much easier, as I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted: Marylou sitting on her beautiful, antique Humped Back Sofa with Burgundy Crushed Velvet upholster and rolled wooden arms. Behind her, I positioned selected Family Photos on a table, underneath a Tiffany Style Table Lamp. On the wall, behind Marylou was to be that Naïve Painting of the Virgin Mary, and again, I wanted Marylou's hand to mimic the very specific gesture of the Virgin in the painting.
I'd even asked Marylou if she had anything similar in Color or Style to what the Virgin was wearing (a Dark Blue-Green robe with long dramatic sleeves). She said she did, in fact have a dress, which met that description, which a friend had made by hand out of an elaborate lace. When I saw the dress, I immediately knew I had gotten myself into TROUBLE, because it was BRIGHT BLUE and incredibly detailed... I knew that dress would be extremely complicated to paint, yet I didn't want to disappoint Marylou, nor make her feel uncomfortable. So I said nothing.
When I got home that night to review the nearly 300 Photographs I'd taken that day, I was DEVASTATED to encounter a technical issue, that I still, to this day, don't fully understand. But the long and the short of it is that I had only low resolution thumbnails, but the full 5,616 × 3,744 resolution of the 21 Megapixel Canon 5D Mark II camera, were not available. I had a mini-panic attack and ate the entire contents of my Refrigerator trying to think HOW I was going to tell Nelson (and Marylou) that we needed to schedule a THIRD Photo Session. Amazingly, they were BOTH very understanding and we arranged to meet up again a few days later.
This time, we were ALL seasoned Pros, and Nelson and I had gotten Furniture Moving down to a Science.
Even though the thumbnails from that Second Photo Session appeared to be very much what I'd hoped for, I decided to take the technical difficulties as a sign from the Universe that I needed to reevaluate my concept. And once I'd made that decision, i immediately had my 'Eureka!" moment, where the entire Theme and symbolism of the Portrait became crystal clear to me.
Rather than seating seating Marylou on a sofa, I decided to position her standing in front of the mirror which hung over the fireplace, with those Family Photos adorning the Mantle. Reflected in the Mirror was to be that Painting of the Virgin Mary
