Painting with a big brush and lots of paint

I never really have thought of myself as a formal portrait painter, likely this may have to do with the fact I have few formal tendencies to begin with, yet I dabble in the representation of people that I either know or see and catch my attention. I consider these paintings candid and fond the definition of candid to be of some use in my approach. Candid is defined as truthful, straightforward, and frank. Additionally, candid is thought of as a informal capture of a subject. As a child I spent my days in the company of dogs and horses more than with other children. We lived many miles from town, and perhaps by logistics or by my innate nature I preferred the friendship of animals. I played to the noise of a constant internal dialogue, I created stories for everything and I narrated those stories to myself as I played. When I first see a person that catches my attention and I intend on painting the childhood voice returns and the story begins as I envision how the painting will appear on my canvas or paper. I would like you to come along with me as I walk you through a bit of this narration in a recent effort to candidly capture in oils someone from a local ranch rodeo.

Often my inspiration for candid portraits comes when I least expect it, or when I am out looking for an entirely different subject. I was walking, talking, and sketching at an event called a ranch rodeo, an event different from traditional rodeo in that the contestants perform tasks directly related to ranch work versus the traditional bull riding, team roping, barrel racing etc, my focus that day was on capturing reference of cowboys interacting with horses in certain poses to be used in future paintings. I noticed a young woman who was competing and handling herself equal to or better than any man at the event-and the internal dialogue began and I forgot all other purpose. As I recall the story began with how the way she was dressed perfectly camouflaged her among her male peers, then the blonde ponytail contrasted against the blue denim shirt led to what for me was the apex of the story. Among the dirt, sweat, blood, and noise sat a rather robust diamond earring precariously perched upon her ear while she rode roughshod among cattle, horses and other competitors. The diamond earring told a story, the story of a girl growing up among cowboys learning all the trade yet somehow managing to maintain her femininity.

Contrast is what I look for in painting. The contrast between light and dark, warm and cool, rough and smooth, greyed and pure chroma and in this case the contrast between masculinity and femininity, brazen and soft, salt of the earth and angelic. I knew I wanted to paint this person but how? What pose would best tell this story? Ultimately I wanted the earring to be noticeable but not necessarily obvious. I wanted to show the beauty and softness but also the grit, determination, work ethic, and ranching skill. After taking several reference shots and doing a variety of small sketches I settled upon a profile view.

The profile view created what I believed to be the strongest silhouette and emphasized the character, personality, and spirit I was looking to capture in paint. All portraits offer endless opportunities to contrast hard and soft edges and I chose to be selective in what edges were going to be crisp and which were to be soft. Every component of a painting has the potential to tell the story in a better way and often this is the realm of intuition rather than cerebral process.

The background was an important part of my story and I knew this would be so even before I began painting. The contrast of chaos and grace in my internal dialogue crept into the design and execution of the background. I sought the feeling of hectic, chaotic, motion and softer, quieter areas of the composition, so an abstraction of the rodeo action narrated through active, bold brushstrokes seemed appropriate. I felt the color selection for the background should continue the story and I decided to use some of the wonderful sky color of that day which harmonized with the shirt color. I bounced a rather intense color note of orange from her neck, up into her cheek, and a careful considered bit just near her eye to add excitement and contrast. The star of the show, the earring, I reserved a strong pure white. I found it interesting to use white all over the canvas but to tint it subtly so that the pure tube white in the earring would sing without being off tune.

I hope you can appreciate how I approach these candid portraits and understand my use of narrative technique to aide in the creation of a painting. Thank you for taking the journey with me!

J.R.