A key project for me was completing my self portrait by early June, so it would be dry enough to submit to Art Center Ukiah’s July show. I wanted to do a fairly classical portrait, and ended up going very dark on background in order to let the face come forward.
At the same time, I was working on another portrait of Tori, from a photo in which she was simply part of a larger composition. This ended up expressing itself with a looseness I have only achieved with the mixed media portraits, and I am very pleased with it.
So I started the portrait of my husband, Stuart, in a classical mode, but the dark background just wasn’t working for me. It took a while to figure out how to get a looser feel, and fortunately an old photo of him in the Fantasy Records vault provided the key to a loosely brushed background.
