Sunday, July 01, 2018

PORTRAIT DEFINITELY FINISHED

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to do it or that you must do it. In making art and in teaching art one of my guiding principles is that less is more. Being too obedient to what your eyes tell you can mean producing something that is competent but banal, pedestrian. What you must obey is the truth of your intuition and this often means having the courage to reject information, too much information.

I knew that the last version I posted of my portrair of Fionn Wilson with the more detailed. lighter hair, was wrong. Wrong in terms of my portrait of Fionn, never mind anything else. The added information about hair detracted and distracted from the character of the face. I knew this while I was in the act of 'improving' the hair and yet I carried on, going against my intuition. 

So I've now made the hair darker, removed some of my needless tweaking, and I think it's much better. I'm stopping now.

Finished portrait of Fionn Wilson. 1 July 2018

5 comments:

Vincent said...

Yes! Now it has really come to life. Your dilemmas, deliberations, reworkings—and the portrait itself—instantly bring to mind Final Portrait in which Geoffrey Rush plays Giacometti. I think you would appreciate it even more than we did.

Catalyst said...

Your portrait tells me something: I should like to meet Fionn Wilson!

Tom said...

Quite wonderful!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Thanks Vincent. I haven't seen the G.Rush/Giacometti film, is it on DVD? The link you gave isn't working but maybe that's just here. Some weird things have been happeniung with my internet connection, it's not letting me into my own website for one thing. Am trying to sort it out.

Bruce, yes, Fionn is an interesting and very sympathetic woman. I only met her recently but we are already good friends. She's an artist and urator and has invited me to take part in an exhibition which opens next year.

Tom, thank you. I think this last stage works best but I also wish I'd kept an earlier, simpler version.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

That's supposed to read "curator" not urator!