Portraits

“In a portrait it always seems to me presumptuous to think one can capture the character of the sitter. Who knows what people are really like? Painters have no special insight. The expression on the face and the surface of skin and hair are what one can try to catch, but to go beyond that to the psyche of the sitter would require someone with talents other than the painter’s. Paint is a sensual, visual medium which is inappropriately asked to do certain precise things which perhaps even words can’t do. Our emotional life, which people seem to think paintings are about, is not in paint’s repertoire.”

– John Jones