It has been a long time that our artist Art Burshy made a portrait.
When he was young he made quite a few, and making a portrait is always a struggle.
First of all, it is bloody difficult to make a drawing or painting resemble a person truly.
There were moments where he would start a painting, thinking all the first strokes were perfect, capturing the key features of the face...
and then in the end it turned out to be a completely different person.
Or even worse, he would think it was a success...and then other people would not even recognise the person from the portrait.
Actually he discovered that the worse the start, the longer the struggle, the better the end result.
And it was great when in the end people admired a portrait; it is the sort of painting that is easiest accessible and always results in people admiring your skills.
And....now he realises about portraits that:
- almost every style has been tried, and often better than he could do it himself,
- it is bloody tiring to make them; it makes him focus on skills and the resemblance, rather than enjoying painting and expression.
- in addition there are always expectations when you portray people; they would like to be beautiful and smiling...which is much less interesting than portraying the ugliness and truly dark expression
- there is no representational purpose of portraits; if you want a picture you just take a picture,
- he does not need admiration for his portrait skills, really, sure it is nice but he can do without,
- he is even tired of people having an opinion of portraits, and how good it resembles the portrayed person. Normally people are quite reserved when watching modern art, but once it is a portrait...my God they do have an opinion, and worse, they feel an uncontrollable need to share it with the artist
But...
Recently he could not resist temptation...and he started a portrait.
And this time he wrote down the guidelines for his own painting:
"I shall remain focused on expression and the joy of painting"
"I will make a portrait of the one person that will not have any expectations; myself"
"I will do it without mirror, as I think I should know my own face by now"
"whenever I catch myself thinking of - whether it resembles me - I shall undergo sanctions:
- throw paint on the portrait to force myself to be less focused on the resemblance
- drink a beer, even in the morning - not really a punishment but will loosen me up
- ask opinion of my son, who will always be ready to tell me it is crap
- force myself to laugh out loud for 5 minutes...
- and the continue"
And actually he is happy with the result (so far), and remained truly free.
And now Art even thinks this method could probably also be used in other contexts:
- artists too much focused on making the perfect painting, but maybe also
- people at work losing focus on pleasure and having fun at work
- bankers that are too focused on numbers, forgetting how nice it is to give good service and help an ordinary person
- politicians that are busy with power and influence, that forget the dreams they had at the start
- parents that are focused on what their children should become, forgetting to actively show their love and support
Well, maybe Art should start making such experiments for himself, before expanding this innovative treatment to other areas, don't you think?
