My fascination with portraits goes back a long way. From the time I discovered the good old pencil, I’ve loved drawing faces. From family members to teachers to fictional characters and acquaintances real and imagined, I enjoyed rendering their likenesses on whatever surface I chanced upon.
What makes portraiture so interesting to me is my hunch that there is a bit of each of us in each of us, that perhaps fundamentally human beings are all the same, while countless permutations, combinations, twists and turns lead us to our unique encounters with the ‘moment’ which we retrospectively
term as our individual experience. It is precisely that ‘moment’ in the individual – rather than the individual herself - that I aim to recreate and preserve a visual memory of, in the hope that it might engage a viewer into reliving that moment, even if only vicariously.
My personal gratification from a finished portrait comes from sensing a quaintly ‘personal’ resonance with it, regardless of whether the portrait is of someone I know or that of a perfect stranger.
I believe in being meticulously true to the detail when
I make a portrait, for, to rephrase Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the individual is in the detail. That said, I do not aim for slavishly photorealistic works where the details cumulatively dominate and overpower the scene to the extent that the experience of the moment is lost on the viewer, whose senses get overdosed on far too much visual information than would allow for an obstructed perception of the ‘moment’ as intended by the artist. To keep the moment’s importance intact, and the details subservient, I find graphite perfectly suited to the task. It has its own distinct
way of striking that ineffable balance – surrendering completely to the requirements of non-negotiable precision, while retaining that overall mysteriousness which makes a work of art enticing.
