Category: Portraits 212 images (Page 1 of 8)

(153 Images; 6 pages). Amusingly enough, my first book commission (in 1996 or so?) required an eyepopping FIFTY, pen & ink portraits of North Carolina authors. As I recall, I was promised (which is a radically different thing from actually being paid, particularly when you’re dealing with small publishers) $1,000 for the job. I ended up being paid in used-furniture (which I didn’t mind…and all of which I still have). After that?…I found myself being commissioned by a lot of newspapers, book reviews (we still had them back then), and magazines for portraits….and I went from continuously writing about authors to continuously drawing them (which is easier and, frankly, pays better). These days, I do a lot of commissioned portraits…probably my favorite work. Many of these are memorial portraits (don’t ask me how such clients find me out.  I do know that I don’t find myself being commissioned for silly vanity-projects; presumably, those clients go elsewhere).  It’s an odd, but gratifying, sensation to enter so fully into one particular aspect of the life of a person I’ve usually never met (yes…I do work from photographs).

“Shady Grove” (Nellysford, VA)

“Adam’s Way/Faithful”

“Kind Hearts & Gentle People” (portrait of Sunny Nan Mosely; Charlottesville, VA)

“For Leslie” (Portrait of Rafi Tal)

“Portrait of Louanne Watley”

“Dans Le Nord Pinus” (Arles; France)

“Ancora Bellissima, Come Sempre”

Love, actually…

Flannery O’Connor (Miss O’Connor is At Home Today…)

Edna St. Vincent Millay

MFK Fisher (Poet of the Appetites)

“These Three”

“In These Times”

“Horseman” (portrait of Will Faudree; Southern Pines, NC)

“Sarah’s Smile” (for Sarah Ovenall. July 2013)

“Close From the Start” (Ashley Rose Terry)

“Nobody’s Girl”

“VALENTINO” (Portrait of Suman Bhatia. 2013)

William Faulkner (“The Dixie Special Arrives in Hollywood, with Baggage”)

“A Fisher King” (Herve Mommeja-Marin; Barcelona, 2010)

First Loves (for my Father; Greeneville, TN. 1954)

“The Harp Weaver” (a portrait of my longtime friend, Newby Day, & her youngest grandson)

“Side By Side” (Portrait of Mimi Dupree and children)

“The Wild Geese”

Portrait de Claire Briggant

“When We Were Very Young” (Portrait of Kate & Newby; Charlottesville, Va. Christmas 2010)

“Build Me a Boat” (Portrait of Dale Reed and Daughter)

“What’ll I Do?” (Portrait of Martini Emmart- Niedbalski, for Bob Niedbalski. July 2013)

Tous Les Matins Du Monde (Portrait of Danielle, Anne, Max, Arwen,et Julie Mommeja-Marin. Christmas Morning, 2009. Tours)

“Portrait of Catherine Sullivan Oztekin”