Semicolons and Periods

A visual artist is as sensitive when to change direction of a drawn line as a writer is sensitive when to use a semicolon.

A visual artist is as sensitive when to end a drawn line as a writer is sensitive when to end a sentence.

The above is in response to a writer criticizing me for using too many semicolons as he found them disruptive—a concept new to me.

Ida Kotyuk ©  www.portraits-oils.com

Reality TV and the Arts

A few years back I got a letter from one of those popular cable stations (Bravo?). The letter stated they wanted to run a reality program about visual artists and would I be interested in participating. If so, please fill out the following questionnaire. I’m not sure how they found me. My instincts told me the cable station purchased the Chicago Art Institute’s data base. One primary marketing goal I have is to be listed in as many data bases as possible. How can opportunity knock if I don’t stand behind as many doors as I can find.

The letter itself was only one page long. The questionnaire ran for fifteen pages. But, I am always happy to fill out questionnaires that require one answer only. As I skimmed over the pages I asked myself, well…how bad can it be?

Invasive! That’s how bad it could be. I had two thoughts: first, they asked questions which my own mother wouldn’t dare to ask, and I would never answer; and secondly, if the cable station wished to understand artists and the art world, then good luck getting me to tell you the truth about that stuff.

Worse yet, each question required an essay answer! What? Did they want artists to do their job for them? Is everyone in reality television exposed to this type of psychological profiling?

Today, I don’t remember one question and am fairly certain I didn’t save the letter; or, if I did save the letter, it is somewhere “safe.” That is, never to be found again, like much in my filing system.

But I did remember my own academic experiences. I knew there was no way a group of artists in one room would get along—forget compatible. Believe me when I say Donald Trump is an innocent when it comes to ambition and back stabbing. The program Survivor couldn’t hold a candle. Picture a room of musicians, each following their own mental drummer arguing who is the best performer, the best composer. They wouldn’t get their own work done. Or—remember the ambition and back stabbing in the movie “Black Swan.” The idea of presenting a reality program with artists as the protagonists is similar to the play Hamlet—everyone is dead at the end. Hmmm….so was the swan.

The participants in Donald Trump’s program and Survivor are fighting for a common goal; be it a job or money. For a visual artist to admit “I’m doing this strictly for the money,” is to be black-balled in the art world. Your art will never be taken seriously. (My denial to make a lot of money is also part of my hypocrisy.)

I wonder what percentage of artists responded to that mailing? What were the cable station’s parameters. Who were the artists?

In the years since I got that letter I keep looking for the completed program. Why hasn’t it been aired? Nothing. Nada. Did I miss it? Instinct tells me, the cable station was disappointed in the number of respondents. If so, I can only say—good for us.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.
Ida Kotyuk©
http://www.portraits-oils.com/

The Christmas Portrait

Standing at the window, I watched the young couple come up the walk. They looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Are they newly weds? Why do I think they’re married? What could a young couple want from a portrait painter when their money should be tied up in their firsts: their first home, their first car, their first child. Couples that young should be paying off their wedding or honeymoon. What is more important—than their married firsts?

I opened my door to them and stepped back as we introduced ourselves. I asked what kind of portrait were they interested in and how could I help them.

It was the young wife who wanted the portrait. She reached into her purse to pull out a letter-sized envelope with five, faded and worn, small photographs of a laughing teenage boy. I spread them out on my drawing board.

“I would like an oil portrait,” she said.

She explained he was her brother and she wanted the oil portrait as a Christmas gift for her parents.

My clients know their own mind and what it is they want from me. But, yet, I had to ask, “You don’t think your mother and father would like a portrait of you and your husband for Christmas?”

“No. I definitely want one of him.”

“May I ask why.”

“Well. He died last summer and I want to give them something this Christmas.”

“He died. How old was he?”

“He was sixteen-years-old.”

Picturing the need for closure on a long-suffering illness I thought, perhaps, her parents weren’t ready for the next step.

“How did he die?”

“He was shot by his best friend.”

“Shot! What happened?” I asked, thinking what could a sixteen-year-old boy be doing that would get him killed.

“He and his buddy were washing his car when my brother aimed the water hose at him. As a joke his buddy pulled a gun from his car and waved it around as a threat. The gun accidentally went off and shot my brother in the stomach.”

“Oh. Hell.”

We stood shaking our heads in silent communion at life’s stupidities. Her husband never said a word, this was his wife’s story.

Looking down at my drawing board, I spread out her few photographs and asked, “Is any particular one your favorite?”

From the smiling five photographs she said, “Well, we sort of like this one,” and pointed to a young face tilted back with laughter.

“Excellent,” I said, asking for my deposit.

Without a single hesitation or question her husband reached into his back pocket to pull out his check book and opened it to write the specified amount.

A little surprised because he didn’t ask about size or the other myriad questions, I stepped back, and said “You’ve talked to other artists.”

“Yes. You’re our fourth.”

“What was wrong with them?” I asked.

“They said not enough information.”

“Not enough information! He’s a sixteen-year-old boy. I don’t need to know anything else,” I said, gathering up the photographs.

As they walked back to their car I became angry at those other artists who didn’t have enough information. That they didn’t understand she didn’t ask for an oil portrait to bring her brother back to life. But rather, it was the gift from a daughter to her mother and father. That, as an alternative, this Christmas they would talk about the good times.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

Ida Kotyuk©

www.portraits-oils.com

The Blue Ruler

Why does it have to be blue? I have yellow rulers, clear rulers, wooden rulers, wiggly rulers; but I only reach for the blue. “Oh yeah. I want to underline that. Where’s my blue ruler.” Or, when I read, I have my blue ruler to guide me sentence by sentence, by paragraph. I can’t read anything, except novels, without my blue ruler. What’s that about?

My blue rulers come in all sizes and shapes; long ones, shorts ones. And, all the numbers are faded. I like the blue plastic ones the best. What’s with that?

I ran out to an office supply store once because I felt I didn’t have enough blue rulers. Once home, there they sit in a pile. It is better to have too many blue rulers than not enough. I have them in my bedroom. I have them by the television. I have them by my laptop computer. I have them by my upright computer. There is a whole bunch in my studio. The only place I don’t have a blue ruler is in my kitchen. Hmm…. Maybe I need one there.

If I were an Egyptian I would ask that a bunch of blue rulers be packed away with me when I die. Stuck in my hand. Who knows what I’ll be doing on the other side and I don’t want to be without my blue rulers. Plastic, if you please.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

Ida Kotyuk©

www.portraits-oils.com

One Reason Why I Don’t Teach

If, after the third explanation, you do not understand what I am saying—you are hard of hearing.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.
Ida Kotyuk©
www.portraits-oils.com

Gainsborough’s Blue Boy

I’ll wager Thomas Gainsborough’s (1727-1788) “Blue Boy” began life as a “Blue Toddler” or a “Blue Infant.” I’ve seen three-month growth spurts in boys that obliterated their baby fat. Painting children in the middle of a growth spurt is as dramatic an experience as Van Gogh chasing his landscape shadows, just before he shot himself.

I believe growth spurts caused all sorts of problems for our early portrait painters and is one reason many early paintings of children look like an El Greco portrait, stretched and elongated. Imagine a young boy standing next to his favorite horse, growing taller, while the painter pursues spatial relationships.

At one time I delivered the wrong commissioned portrait to a mother who said “that’s not my daughter.”

“Are you sure?” I asked; as if a mother didn’t know her own child and thinking there had been another growth spurt.

One reason most children’s portraits are relegated to the attic or loosely tossed into some drawer is that our early images appear/ seem/ important only to us and recognizable only by us.

[Consider, if all portraits of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were oil paintings of them as infants, what would our money look like?]

Luckily, I meet men and women (and briefly, become a part of their lives), who understand and recognize what they have; that is, these few moments in time that belong to them.

When we become adults we handle all our early images with indifference. We are unaware of our importance to our parents, our children, and to society. What pleasure to find my mother’s passport photograph when I was a decade older than that image; or, to see an old black-and-white film of her girlishly giggling and my father behaving in a goofy manner. What unbelievable wonder to view these images years after their death with a family of my own.

It can be a miserable time to be a portrait painter when we are able to delete an image with the press of a thumb or a flick of a finger. Thank heaven our predecessors did not live in a digital age. We should take a page from their example and capture our and others’ image to celebrate who we are today, everyday, and every decade of our lives.

Because in the end, we are all we have.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

©Ida Kotyuk

www.portraits-oils.com

The Other Boleyn Girl

Casting Directors

Notwithstanding the 1,001 historical inaccuracies, I love the film “The Other Boleyn Girl” (American version). It spoke to me: the actors; the characterizations; the director’s work; as well as the music score written for each character. It all came together. I am always impressed by the film industry’s efforts that you and I become part of, and understand, the events and characterizations we see on screen. The film industry spoon-feeds information to us, as we, the audience, allot them fewer than ten seconds to tell us who, what, when, where and why.

The profession I most admire in film is the role of the casting director. Many times I feel he should receive an additional bonus. [History Channels’ casting director for “Battles BC” should get a very, very, very special big bonus.] He requires a sensitivity special to his job; narrowing the field to the select few to be chosen who best represent the script’s character. He must comprehend the requirements of a wide international audience. It is crucial that he assist us, the audience, to know which character is which; in other words, to tell the characters apart. The casting director can handicap a viewer if he lacks the awareness of inherent visual similarities found in both cultural and familial resemblances. His is a complex responsibility. In reality, cultures and families resemble each other and to an outsider, like myself, watching a foreign film, at times it is hard to tell the father from the uncle, the uncle from the cousin, the aunt from the mother, and the sister from sister without the fine distinction of physical nuance.

Thanks to the visual dissimilarities of Anne, Mary, their family, and yummy Henry VIII, I could tell the characters apart. [Based on Holbein’s portraits of Henry VIII, I never understood the seduction of a powerful king and the women who threw themselves at him. Or, did Henry fill his court with accommodating women?] I found the movie to be less about important historical figures than the dynamics of family and family ambitions. I am aware of two dissimilar sisters chasing the same boyfriend; sisters that, today, could live across from me.

While viewing families in movies, I ask myself, how would a portrait painter show the dynamics, similarities, and/or dissimilarities when, in truth, families look remarkably alike? Or put another way, how would a portrait painter show what’s going on.

Because a portrait painter tries to capture that same family dynamic that takes hundreds of personnel in the film industry. While the casting director works backward from what I do, our final results “must be the same.” He works from the script and the author’s and/or director’s ideas of a prescribed personality; whereas the portrait artist seeks out the personality in the existing image. The casting director picks an image from thousands of choices, whereas the portrait painter captures a thousand nuances in one image.

Double that dilemma by two. How would a portrait artist reveal the dynamics between two sisters knowing there are years of hidden emotions? I can’t just put them side by side and hope for the best. Who is dominant? What if one sister is a gray little mouse and the other sister a pit bull? Placement, alone, never offers a solution.

Also, much like the film industry, the portraitist must keep more than one or two people happy. We must consider all the other relatives who will view the finished portrait: aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and in-laws. At times a client doesn’t know how he or she feels about a portrait until someone says, “that’s really nice!”

In addition, the portraitist will want to consider the hundred years of past history and his/her place in it. The method of application, colors used, brush strokes, paint, pastel, watercolor, charcoal, pencil, and/or clay, all determine the era, and the artist’s perceptions within that era, in which the portrait was created.

A popular misconception is to assume a portrait captures what a camera captures; i.e., that one second in time. When, in fact, what a finished portrait accomplishes is similar to what the film industry accomplishes (and what the movie audience experiences); that is, the disclosure of personality that stands up to re-reviewing over time and future generations. Our photographs live their life in a drawer somewhere within our house, but an oil portrait lives its life somewhere on a wall.

Additionally, film industry advantages to illustrate one personality are: staff to bring the project to completion, moving time to reveal a character’s growth or change, each character’s music to describe that character’s inner-self, a longer period to complete a movie (possibly a year or two), and a captive audience. Whereas, the portraitist has the quiet slow-moving brush, pencil, or clay and only a few weeks to interpret an individual’s character, and the desire that such effort will be successful.

How would I paint a portrait of Anne or Mary Boleyn? I could consider giving each sister her own canvas; but that, in a way, is to cheat. The casting director knows both sisters will be on the screen at the same time, we see the similarity/dissimilarity in both, and I must do no less.

If you get fewer than 2,000 rejections a year, you are not working hard enough.

©Ida Kotyuk

www.portraits-oils.com