Here’s a new portrait that got me some more portrait action. Last year 13% of my income was portrait commission work, which is how I like it. This year I’m in the same ballpark. I get more commissions in the fall for Christmas. Right now I’ve got a couple more coming in. This portrait of Will hit the mark for the parents. I think there’s a little Rockwell and Homer in this portrait. Representational art, which was beaten to a bloody pulp in 20th century American art for no good reason in the end, is a challenging world. The hardest possible thing in art that I’ve taught myself has been portraiture. A lot of people bypass representational work because they aren’t good enough or it’s too hard. There are a lot of boring representational painters out there, plenty of bad painters, but more art is bad than good, so this applies to any genre. Portraiture is nice income, keeps me sharp in this discipline and I apply this work to all parts of my creative canon. Artists who pooh pooh portraiture are of little interest to me in the end because this is a very shortsighted in this Reconstructionist era in which bridges are built between the genres in art. This is why I work concurrently on five bodies of work that involve different genres. Without portraiture I would not have the capacity to paint in these other styles.
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