Portraits in New Places, and Painting & (Re)Discovering New & Old Favorite Artists
On capturing the writer of one of my favorite books, a new artist found in a beautiful exhibit, and dreaming of a new chapter of creating and painting
Hello there! I’m excited to share some updates and new paintings of new and old favorite artists, along with some beautiful art and words I’ve found and revisited.
But first, since I’ve last written here, some of my portraits were featured in the first issue of Wondering, a publication my friend and colleague, Francis Poon, beautifully put together. It was so exciting to collaborate and see these paintings and drawings of women I had sketched over the years, from very near and very far, in different formats across the issue, and accompanying a range of great personal pieces related to motherhood for the inaugural Mother’s Day issue— you should check them out!
I also wrote about my journey to drawing faces - from the subway, to the screen, and lots of strangers and heroes in between at the bottom (if you scroll).
And actually, as Mother’s Day approached (which now feels like / is a whole season ago), I was pulled back to one of my favorite writers, who has also has written in a different, blunt way about motherhood (lil more on that below), and who my mom introduced me to - Natalia Ginzburg- through my now favorite book of essays, The Little Virtues, as well as her odd, funny family memoir-novel Family Lexicon.
When I looked her up for the first time to paint her, she looked different than I expected, but I also wasn’t surprised - there’s a kind of toughness and directness in her face, and a slight mystery—all of which comes through in her writing, which is in some ways deeply personal and intimate (you feel as if you are around the dinner table with her family in Turin, and then on the streets with her in Abruzzi, a small Italian town that her family fled to from the Nazis), while somehow also detached.
In The Little Virtues, she writes with a subtle wit and humor in essays that span the mundane and the existential— about her need to write, wearing shitty shoes, bad food in England, how starkly different she and her husband were, and how children should be raised … which is really about living in general (to value and teach not caution but courage, not thrift, but generosity, “not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know”) -- while isolation and fear and deep loss seep through in spare moments. She wrote while living through the second World War and fascism, in the midst of horror and grief (her husband was killed after being tortured by Nazi police). And yet, her writing feels rooted in the everyday, in depictions of deep and strange friendships and crazy family arguments, and is somehow timeless and relatable. If you’d like some thoughtful company/musings/wisdom, you should give this gem of a book (just over 100 pages!) a read.
This must have been the first time I tried painting someone whose only inner life I was familiar with (and felt swept up in, while reading)- having never seen a photo of her before. I also pushed myself to go further with color than I usually do, and let the paint drip around her. I wanted to learn more about her as I painted, so reached for interviews and articles - here’s a great and short piece on her in the New Yorker.
Continuing with this thread of celebrating mom’s, for my mom’s birthday, we ventured to the very special Noguchi Museum, for an exhibit of the artist Toshiko Takaezu. I’m not usually so taken with sculptures, but I was stunned by her gorgeous glazes and enigmatic shapes- I highly recommend checking it out - it’s open until July 28!
When I saw a photo of her at the exhibit, I knew I was going to paint her. (You can see a few great ones, along with her bio here- which summarizes her impressive life as an accomplished artist) She has a beautiful face, and a love for her work comes through in her eyes in these photos, as she looks at all the sculptures in balls and mounds, in earthy tones and dazzling blue and purples around her. That joy and being totally enraptured by her work came through in interviews I listened to , while painting. Not unlike Natalia Ginzburg, she is refreshingly blunt, tough, direct, and a whole-hearted belief in the need to make her art coming through in her voice- she sounds completely devoted to what seems like a very particular vision.
I’m trying to take a page from Tashiko and Natalia. As I paint and draw more, I love it more— and as my work in documentary production has unfortunately been sloooow (at least for now), and I’m figuring out what’s next, it feels like the time to paint and draw more, share more, and try selling my original artwork. I may attempt to make prints as well, and would love to start taking commissions. I hope this will lead to more portraits of people who intrigue or inspire, and are admired from close or afar.
I’d love to hear if you have any interest in any of the above, or any ideas or guidance (especially if you are an artist who has taken a similar plunge, an art / portrait lover, or would like to support this new journey)!
In the meantime, I’m excited to continue painting, learning about and exploring the people I aim to capture, and share what I discover here.
Thanks for tuning in and for your support!
Love,
Willa