[Debra Jones]

I am being torn in a couple of directions. I think I have a gift for likenesses and I really enjoy doing them. I can paint heads until we get a 20 degree day down here some August, but I would really like to earn a living. Although I do pictures of people and they pay me, there is nothing large enough coming in to call myself a professional portrait artist.

Maybe marketing. But I would like to show to a wider range of people. The "Strangers-watching- you-eat" that I have come to call my studio portraits are all personality studies to ME but they lack a story that seems to interest others. They are functioning as promotional pieces, not work.

I am hoping to attract a client who either likes my style of work so they may forgive me loving doing the painting and help me keep my sanity overlooking that missplaced nostril, or will actually buy the piece right out. By spending the greater part of the pose working on my banes: hands, clothes (yuck), and stretching my observation of the room, the environment, I am hoping to figure out what that thing called style is.

I am developing confidence. It is heady. Knowing something good keeps coming out when I open my paintbox is as addictive as drugs! Now, you may laugh, but I need to get these things out of my house! I literally am wall to wall art and don't take the time to stop painting to figure out how to sell. If I can find a product I feel happy with I can take a body of work around and possibly settle into my niche.

My single gallery sale EVER was the one the client pointed to and said "I want that Koboyashi looking one." When I studied with Milt, the thing I wanted was his wisdom, not his style. It is very hard not to osmosis his look, as everyone in town that has studied with him seems to do, but to keep the personal feeling and find my own way to pack a picture with the emotion his have, whatever that emotion is.

THAT is what I mean by style.