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Without that externally imposed discipline and structure I think I would still be going off in all directions.
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I've had the same experience, for me the focus has led to a higher level of skill which has translated into my non-portrait work. Last night I was at a reception for the AAF Contemporary Art Fair in NYC, where some of my work is being exhibited. Another artist asked me where I studied and I told her, but then I realized, and said--I really learned to paint by doing commissioned portraits.
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people are perfect as they are, and don't need me to make them more so.
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I love this so much, thanks Ted.
I seem to have an unconscious desire to please--so that for me, when the likeness is off, its usually because I've unconsciously strayed toward some false ideal--the eyes aren't small enough, the nose isn't big enough, etc... I only ran into the opposite problem at the beginning. Now it seems if prospective clients see my work, and like it, then they're ok with how I see people. The trick is to find the reference photos that they truly feel happy with.
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she often asked people if they would sit for her. Her portraits were appreciated by some subjects, but not others
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Alex, she worked in relative obscurity and poverty for a lot of her life, and her main subjects were family, lovers, and neighborhood kids that she asked to sit for her. She only became an art star in the seventies, when she was already in her seventies. (had to do with the decline of formalism, and a more pluralistic art world, including pop art, photo-realism etc...) It then became a great honor to sit for her, and her subjects sometimes purchased the paintings and sometimes others did. So at all times, she pretty much had total artistic control over the project, it was not a collaboration in the way much of our work is.