Do your features and personality come out in your paintings of others?

[Tom Edgerton]

"Do your features and personality come out in your paintings of others? "

God, I hope not, for their sakes.

Secretly, though, I know Sharon's right. Love the quotes, especially the one from Samuel Johnson. It's why I'm a portrait painter.

--TE

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thanks for all your comments. I agree that each painting is autobiographical. How can it not be? A person can only surmise the character of someone or something who is is not him or herself. However well you think you know someone, and how accurately you try and portray the personality and the features, it is really just something created in your imagination from what you recognize about yourself in that person. Unless you acquire the gift of mind-reading, then you cannot extricate the idea of what another person is from what you understand yourself to be. In other words, it only your experience of being yourself - living your emotions, behaviour, features etc. - that informs you of the characteristics that make up someone else. And, in addition, I believe that everyone is probably essentially narcissistic, and so things about the other person or thing that do not relate, and thus are of no interest to oneself, will not be noticed. Thus, at the very least, the selections an artist makes of what to put in a painting and what is left out are more revealing of the character of the artist much more than the sitter.