My daughter continues to enjoy her portrait as well. I think it did a good job of capturing her at that period, now four years later (she is about to graduate from college). The background was fun to work out, trying to fit the shapes of the Mona Lisa to her life experience, past and future… Echo Park and NYC. It all turned out to be quite realistic!

I hadn’t thought about that, in terms of capturing a youthful nose, or that they keep on growing. Certainly mine does! I did try harder than usual to capture the way she looks here. I prefer to invent faces when I paint multi-figure compositions. It’s half the fun to bring these strange characters up out of nowhere. It is my tendency always, so when I do straight portraiture like this, I have to really restrain myself.

We both do have a connection to family in much of our work. My daughters have shown up in a lot of my work, but here as the source subject matter.

Thanks, Leslie. My daughter has it hanging in her room here at home, even though she is away. It is her surrogate, watching over her stuff! I will be painting my younger daughter at the end of the year, as she enters her senior year of high school. Same size paintng, but very different girls…

Thanks, Cynthia. Ava seems to like her portrait quite a lot. I don’t know if she feels it is flattering or not, but she is interested in how she is depicted. Seeing how another perceives you is a curious experience. It certainly works much better through painting than photography, as the hand of the artist is so much more evident. The filter of the ‘other’ is that much more intense.

I’ve heard that about beautiful women being insecure about their looks, but I never worked up the courage to ask one!

It may come sooner than graduation. I think I’ll have them both in the Paternal Suit project, so I might have to do it a year early. Or maybe she can just study harder and graduate a year earlier!

I have felt more ‘presence’ from painted portraits than I ever have from a photograph of someone. I talk to Rembrandts in museums. I think that has more to do with the painterly inventions of the artist than his subject’s personality, or any fluctuations in movement or posture on the sitter’s part. In my experience (when painting from life) the little shifts are lost in the focus of trying to capture what is before you in as accurate a way as possible. Any capturing of characteristic expressions that occur through small shifts over time would happen at a subconscious level.
As for the question about perspective, I shifted her shoulders to fit the extreme perspectives on both sides of her. Her eyes sit just above the horizon line, so she is looking slightly down on the viewer, while the rest of her drops away as if you were quite close to her. It is a forced perspective. I often bend the rules to get what I want out of a picture…

Maybe the perspective situates the viewer inside (or right on the edge of) what would be considered, for an American anyway, her ‘personal space’? (Is the personal space of a portrait different from that of a living person?)

Thanks, John. High school graduation is a big deal. They are done being children and about to go out in the world and apply all they have learned to an independent life (well, mostly independent!). I certainly can’t afford to send her out into the world with a load of cash, so she gets a painting instead. As for the beauty, that’s all her mother’s genes. She looks just like her.

She will keep the painting all her life: cash would be gone quickly. By the way, I was noticing that Hackett Friedman Gallery is being reborn as “Hackett/Mill.” Looks like it will be all about resale…

I think Hackett-Mill has two living artists. Those dead guys are so much less trouble!

Thanks, C! I just realized that when looked at blown up to full resolution you can even read the text on the background truck and the books. And see the whole band at the party! I took this photo myself, so I wasn’t expecting such full details.

When my girls were younger I used to joke about giving them horrendous facial scars so they’d have to learn to live by their wits and not their beauty. Ava ends up having both. What wonderful weapons for life’s inevitable battles!

Hey, Peter, now that my girl is all grown up I don’t have to be such a hard-ass! But I know what you mean. Age, and a long career making these things, brings some greater degree of latitude in what I’ll paint. Even a Mona Lisa inspired portrait of my daughter!
By the way, you’ll appreciate that the “Kids” painting you did when Ava was born now hangs in Ati’s room. Both girls have grown up with that little gem.