Not a pet portrait

7" x 6"  Oil and Acrylic on board

It has been a while since I have painted portraits of people; but when my mother-in-law's father died at the incredible age of 101, I decided I wanted to paint a portrait of the two of them to give to her.  All I had to base it on were a few pictures of a Thanksgiving dinner we had a few years back.  I chose one, modified it some, and set out to paint this tiny portrait.

Just as I do when painting pet portraits, I thought I would have to confront the anxiety about "getting it right" that always befalls me when starting a portrait (pet or not).  But as I set out to paint this, the usual doubts did not surface.  Laying down the paint and forgetting about matching everything to the photograph came easy to me.  

As I got the paint down in one wet-on-wet go, I kept wondering if I should later go in and add layers of transparent glazes to the faces; but I liked what I had, and remembered how my father used to like my work better when it was "raw" than when I "finished" it.  Being unable to control myself, I did add a few bits of glaze here and there, but made myself stop before I changed the character of what I had captured initially and liked as was. 

I totally understand the need that Giacometti had of revising and re-revising his portraits until he had all but obliterated his imagery; and one day I will have to give in to that part of my instincts and see what happens.  For the time being, I leave this one as it is and hope my mother-in-law likes it too.

Maddie

Maddie
oils and acrylics
8" x 9"

This is Maddie.  Her owner adores her, and the painting was commissioned by friends of his to be given as a gift.  Maddie's owner is a member of the armed forces and has done tours of duty in all our "fun" theaters....  His history of valiant service to this country was the inspiration for the portrait's backdrop.  I used some of his medals to come up with the pattern in the background. 

 I was loosely thinking of Blinky Palermo's paintings at the time.

Blinly Palermo at Dia Beacon

I was also told that Maddie can be a rambunctious dog; so from the pictures I was given, I chose the one that best expressed that.  In that particular picture, Maddie is sitting on a grass field full of clovers, hence the clovers in the portrait.  Maddie might not understand about medals, or the bronze oak leaves attached to them (not depicted on the painting), or Blinky Palermo; but I am sure she knows all about clovers.  Also, I chose to paint the clovers because I was thinking of how lucky Maddie and her owner are to have each other. 

I've been painting these pet portraits for a while, and in another blog of mine I have expressed a certain trepidation about doing them because of the amount of time it takes me to let go of the idea of representing the pets photographically and just getting on with painting. For some reason I did not encounter that initial barrier while painting Maddie and was able to get into the materiality of the medium immediately.  I am not sure why that was; perhaps it was because the background I chose was so busy and so flat and so very different from previous ones that it loosened my preconceptions. Or it was because this was a close-up of a face and the patterns on a German Shepherd lend themselves to being easily abstracted without my paying too much attention to depicting hair too precisely.  Or maybe it was because I used to have a Shepherd whose features are imprinted in my brain, and thus could paint hers, which are similar, more instinctively.  Whatever it was, I had fun with paint!