Portraits
Portraits that seem to be filled with the living energy of a person have always interested me. Among other things, they offer a way around the taboo of staring at another person's face for too long. I enjoy how easily a portrait of an individual can slip, wholly or partly, into a more generalized rendering of a type of person, possibly an archetype whose depiction carries potential universal, symbolic or generic meanings. Some of my portraits have a dual life because they traffic between this individuality and universality.
I agree with at least two things the great artist and portraitist Alice Neel said:
"In politics and in life, I always liked the losers, the underdogs.”
“For me, people come first, I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.”