Portraits

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 I came to portrait painting late in my life. Although I always painted and did wood block prints as a child into adulthood, I was not encouraged to pursue the arts. When we got our first golden retriever for my teenage daughter I began to paint our dog’s portrait and do wood block prints of Sassy for our holiday cards. When her dog friends passed away I would make a woodblock for the owner and make cards in the dog’s memory. I began to know from these portraits that dogs have personalities that are more than just being a breed and that that was what the owners loved the most about their pets. These were my first portraits.

 Frustrated with the small size and color limitations of wood block prints I decided to take a class at the School of Visual Arts in New York City to explore my own talents. In these classes I was drawn to people’s faces. But I was still working as small as with my 6 inch by 8 linoleum blocks I used for woodblock cutting.  Then my career as Head of Human Resources had a turn and there was again no time or encouragement to keep going.

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Several years went by and a friend from one of those exploratory classes suggested I take Portrait Drawing with Alphonse Van Woerkom because he would make me go” big”. So I brought my large paper and charcoal and faced my fear. The model asked me for my portrait at the end of class. I had no idea why. But it gave me the encouragement to try new things as Alphonse pushed me through charcoal, graphite, and ink before he took me back to my beloved watercolor and finally acrylics with a medium. Each step brought its own terror but with his gentle encouragement he let me find my own way. The community of others in the class gave me the encouragement to keep on trying to capture each person’s essence and humanity.  They also taught me that we each see the same person in our very own way- that seeing is part of being who we are.

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For that I have had much more training. As a school teacher of bilingual students who the system failed in so many ways and as a Director of Human Resources in all kinds of work environments I have had a lifetime of trying to find the humanity in people, both the managers who have lost their patience and the student/employee who is in trouble. To build trust you have to try to connect and find the essence of a person. You have to be able to see them not just for the incident at hand but for who they are.

When I am painting there is some moment when I mark the shape of the head and start the placement of the eyes that I begin to “see”   the person. Until that moment it is drawing of lines to hold a shape, for example, the marking of the ear lobe. Once I make the connection and start to “see”, that essence has colors and fluidity that help me bring the person into the paper. When I am working on finishing small details I feel the person is with me. It is a huge gift of an intimacy with simple grace and no pretension  for which I am very grateful. I hope that my portraits evoke that simplicity and gift of grace. For me there is nothing more generous than to be able to present that portrait as a gift.

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More and more while I am working on the painting I also see an image in nature from my childhood in rural New England that ends up as a small poem to the person I am painting. I hope this will lead me to new places that I can share reaching deep down into my own soul. Painting portraits makes me always wonder if the person sitting can see, and more importantly, feel what I see and feel in them.  Do they feel the same intimacy with me from the portrait I have done?  I hope that in my work I have created that special connection. 

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Deborah Virella