Portraits Painted

When I was a kid, I used to love going to the art museum. There were so many interesting things to look at, and I would spend hours and hours going over every artwork in detail. Not only would I study the art work, but I would also read the biographical information and try to memorize it. I don't know why I did this – probably a child's inability to tell the imported from the unimportant. What I do remember best about the museums was the painted portraits. The oil painting portrait gallery – the one with all of the
Renaissance paintings displayed – was my favorite section of the art museum. My dad told me that, before photographers, people used to sit still for hours to get their oil painting portrait done by a professional. I used to try to imagine this, sitting is perfectly still like that for as long as I could – which was usually only a couple minutes.

Whenever I looked at the mantelpiece, I wondered why people didn't have their portraits painted anymore. The photographs that we sat for as a family were pretty good, but they just didn't compare to what I had seen an art museum. Everyone in the painted portraits had looked so serious, so important. Photographs were commonplace, but there was something magical about the painted portrait.

As I grew up, my fascination with painted portraits did not diminish. To the contrary, it only grew greater. I did some work as a photographer in college to pay the bills, and I got to work with one of the last professional portrait painters. He didn't do painted portraits the traditional way for the most part. Instead, people would send in their photographs, and he would turn each of them into a portrait oil painting. Nonetheless, he still did sittings for people who requested them. Although officially there was no difference, confidentially he told me that the best painted portraits came from having someone sit for you in person. There was no substitute for having someone in the room.

He inspired me more than anyone I had met before. I decided to go into portrait painting myself, and soon was enrolled full-time in art school. It was a tough job, and I had to pay my dues doing caricature portraits on the corner for tips. Still, it was worth it to learn this classic art that I admired so much.