I’ve discovered in my work as a portrait painter and Personal Color Analyst, the painted portrait is an abstraction of a person in much the same way a Personal Color Analysis (PCA) palette is a concise design concept of a person. In classical painting, a drawing like the one below, is made preparatory to painting so as to separate the drawing process from the painting issues. It helps an artist isolate and therefore see more clearly form, shadow shapes and to work out composition ideas without a huge investment of time. While drawing this self portrait in preparation for a larger painting, I realized what a wonderful analogy portrait drawing is to the process of finding a person’s native prints and patterns in a PCA session.
In PCA, I look at similar things to find the “essence” or “energy” of a person. Although color is the big story teller in PCA portraiture, energy of line, form and gesture tells so much! This is one level of meaning for the title of my post: that there is an inherent design to our bodies and faces which is created from the essence, or, “energy” of who we are as unique points of consciousness. On a deeper level my metaphysical mentor Neville Goddard coined the expression, ” The world is you pushed out” to teach the idea that we create our own reality.
But, it can also be applied to the design world. I see a parallel with color analysis pioneer, Susanne Caygill, who said “….everything around you is an extension of yourself”. She was interested in the idea of how the physical design found in a person could be related to the things they choose to surround themselves with. My teacher, Olga Kamova, says, “show me a person’s home interiors, and I can tell you many things about their personality”. This has been my experience as well.
The phrase ” essence precedes existence” belongs in this discussion as well.
So….here I am! All the information about me ( except color) is right before you.
What do you see?
Preparatory Drawing For Essence Self Portrait, graphite on paper, 2017.