Perpetrator Portraits?
I've done it with the written word. I've done it with video. I can't sing. All that's left is my paintbrush.
First of all, thank you to subscribers Linelle MacDougal and Roy Hurst. They are accomplished artists. I have done only 25 paintings in my life so I’m a beginner. This is a nice place to be. Every 2 or 3 days, I learn more than I knew before I started. Until two months ago, I had only done 12 so I’m picking up the pace.
Linelle and Roy have given me lots of valuable advice. For the artists out there,
Linelle: (her work can be seen at http://linellelemoine.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/linellelemoine/?hl=en Linelle is a mixed media artist. She does beautiful interpretations of nature, plants, the sea,etc. with just a hint of the morphology of the subject- beautiful stuff. She often creates in groups of three based on a theme or common palette. My favorites are “Season of Possibilities” and “Soho Spring”)
From Linelle:
“Create a body of work- not just a few in each category. You need at least 10 per category.”
(I have made 4 in the pop art genre, none in abstract (which I plan to do the most in), and 14 portraits, 6 of which are political/cause and two of which are self-portraits. I have finished one copy (“Portrait of a young Girl”- Pablo Picasso) and am 1/2 way through another (“Lady with an Ermine”- Leonardo DaVinci).
“Achieve consistency in theme and mark-making.”
(This has been the hardest to achieve. I have made a few polished portraits and a few with a rougher style. The portrait I made of my girlfriend 3 years ago was of a rougher style but most of the time, I find I can’t paint women this way- men, no problem, women, I haven’t done it well yet. My mark making is terribly inconsistent. I also have the bad habit of painting with my fingers. (I have oil paint on my hands all the time.)
Consistent mark making is definitely a shared characteristic of great artists. I have not achieved any kind of consistent theme, even inside of a single genre.
Roy pretends to be an amateur but he’s being modest. I’ve seen a few of his. He knows what he’s doing. He is a portrait artist, primarily but ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (not really) and it wouldn’t make sense for me to make abstract or expressionistic marks without knowing how to make realistic, almost photorealistic portraits i.e. you have to go through all the steps that a real artist would have gone through. I used this idea when I was preparing to play pro golf. I quit when I was 14 and took it up again at age 47. I could still shoot under par. But you can’t just walk out on the pro tour and start playing well. You have to play amateur tournaments and win them and you have to get in a few high stakes gambling games. These were all experiences I missed. So I entered those amateur tournaments and won a few and I got in a high stakes gambling gave with the Cambodian generals. Sure, they all had 3 handicaps but I had to give them 4 or 5 strokes in the gambling game. After I had done all of that, albeit at an accelerated pace, I was ready to take my chances on the pro tour. With art it has to be the same. The abstract artists should be able to make beautiful portraits before they move on to abstract. There are probably some that can’t draw but they shouldn’t be taken as seriously as someone like Picasso (whose ability to draw was legendary).
From Roy:
I was having trouble getting the mouth right on a portrait I was doing of my girlfriend. I knew I wasn’t getting the values right and it looked horrible. Values in painting refer to how light or dark the color is. No matter what I did, it didn’t look right. I called on Roy for help. He told me to make sure the color was right. “If the color is wrong, you won’t find the right value”, said Roy. He diagnosed the problem without seeing my painting. (I was too embarrassed to show it to him at that point). I went back and lightened the color and knocked it down with white and black. Bingo!
I told Roy I was concerned that I was “getting away with it” because of my drawing ability, meaning my painting skills are very limited but I can get it to look ok because I can draw ok (sometimes). He identified with that sentiment Which made me feel like I would get better with paint. (Please don’t tell Roy that I have developed the very bad habit of testing my colors on the sides of the painting that I haven’t gotten to yet. I can’t seem to translate it from a proper palette to the canvas.)
What does this have to do with COVID? Well, I was looking at other artist’s work on the internet and I came across the folk singer, Joan Baez. She is a portrait artist. She painted Dr Fauci, Greta Thunberg, Jackson Brown, Bob Dylan, David Crosby, etc- . The article said the painting of Fauci became “viral” when she wrote the word “TRUST” down the edge of the painting, next to his face. This was clearly the act of someone who didn’t understand medical science. You can’t blame Baez. She focuses on and does well at other things. Why should she know anything about medical science? But you don’t need to understand medical science to know that Dr. Fauci has been up to no good since the beginning when he changed from “no masks” to “two masks” without the data changing or that he advocated for the vaccines “even if you’ve already recovered from the disease” Only a few years ago , said in a widely-circulated video, “If she’s had the disease, she doesn’t need a vaccine because the best protection you can get is from recovering from the disease!” You knew from this that he was leading innocent people to the slaughter but those of us who were paying attention already knew he had done the same thing before; during the AIDS epidemic when he pushed AZT, while inexpensive alternative treatments were available and achieving good results in the hands of ordinary family doctors all over the U.S.
When Dr. Fauci was advocating for more testing of asymptomatic people and more contact tracing in October, 2020 for a respiratory disease transmitted by aerosols*, I thought he was just dumb- Bill Gates too- but when they advocated for getting the vaccine for which we had no knowledge of long-term side effects, even if you had recovered from the disease, I knew they were downright evil. Here is the story and letter Joan Baez wrote to Dr. Fauci and her portrait of him:
*Contact tracing is worthless for respiratory infections transmitted by aerosols. The particles stay in the air for days. Imagine trying to track down the 200 people who had been in the grocery aisle in the last 24 hours where you think you caught it.. Dr. Jonathan Reiner on CNN also lobbied for contact tracing at least as late as October, 2020. It was too late on January 1, 2020.With a disease like AIDS, contact tracing works because people can remember who they’ve slept with (hopefully).
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Mischief Makers
Tony, 2020
acrylic on panel
30 x 24 in
When Joan posted her portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, he was under fire from then President Trump for having the audacity to tell people the truth about the coronavirus. One version of the portrait went viral after she added a single word: “Trust.”
“Dear Dr. Fauci, I’ve painted your portrait to honor you and all you are doing for us and for the world,” she wrote on the post. “It will be a part of my second art exhibit of ‘Mischief Makers,’ paintings of people who have made meaningful social change without the use of violence. I don’t imagine you’ve ever thought of it this way, but you are engaging in nonviolent resistance every time you stand in front of the cameras and attempt to educate the public on how to survive the covid-19 pandemic.”
When Joan heard that Trump was threatening to fire Fauci, she sent him a text saying, “Dear, Tony. Quit.” She soon thought better of it, encouraging him to keep up the good work he’s done for public health under six presidents of both parties.
“He wrote back,” she says, “giving me a thumbs up.”
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“When Joan posted her portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, he was under fire from then President Trump for having the audacity to tell people the truth about the coronavirus. “
-What utter stupidity on the part of whoever wrote this. Dr. Fauci did nothing but tell people lies about the coronavirus. “The nation’s top infectious disease expert.” What a crock! If he was sincere about what he was saying about the coronavirus, he couldn’t have passed a freshman exam on infectious disease. If he was lying on purpose (my guess), he is evil. Innocent people died because of what he told them to do.
Joan’s portrait: (it’s more sophisticated than mine).
Mine: I’m obviously not finished yet. It’s a style of painting I was experimenting with. My other recent ones (of women) have been more photorealistic. I can’t make paintings of women look good using this rougher style. What should I write along the edge?
Three more tomorrow if I can finish them tonight.
Really looking forward to seeing your portraits . I'll be sure to give you my feedback with what I see when I look . I think your portrait of your girlfriend is excellent and of course there is a lot of emotion especially connected to her circumstances . I think when people don't know anyone is watching them ,you get the real emotions . I think Freud never wanted anyone to smile ???
Is there anything you can't do ? Kind of wondering ,as time goes by and more truth comes to light , will people start to second guess who they believed to be true ? With respect to painting , I think one of the best "psychological " painters of emotions was the artist Alice Neel- lots of information and videos of her work . I understand the desire, in the earlier journey of painting ,to make something that look like what we see . However , the really hard part is to paint the "emotion" into the subject matter. When you use the word "perpetrator" what emotion does that stir up ? I am recalling a great art class whereby we were asked to draw and put an emotion into an inanimate object ( sadness) and although the object ( a tea pot ) was totally distorted when drawn (something I love "distortions" - like children's art) the number of images show casing the emotion of "sadness " was worthy of an art show in my opinion. Keep going with your wonderful images of these perpetrators as a sort of classical training , then switch , once comfortable , to the emotional feeling of what a "perpetrator of dishonesty" could look like ,in your opinion ? Thank you for your generous shout out Dr Sheftall.