Portraiture used to be about capturing the essence of a person, but that kind of blew up once everyone figured out that each of us is a messy blob of social conditioning and genetics with shiftable "selves". Now we pay homage to the blobs we perceive.
Life as a social construct is so precarious. And sometimes beautiful. When I get to know someone I read them like literature, as a refractive display of stories and motives and fears. I've always been confused by how people behave and what they want. Tone deaf even, and catastrophically so. Sorry.
A portrait makes the construct palpable, and the human in humanity becomes more apparent somehow. Still can't place it. Like an electron, it's everywhere or nowhere all at once depending on when and how you look. But it gives me time to think and consider, and if the artist is really good a portrait will offer something I haven't seen before. Seeing something I haven't seen before means I think of things I haven't thought of before, that I get a perspective I didn't have before. This is one reason I love "art" in general.
Today's unfocused reverie has been brought to you by sleepiness, Arizona Green Tea, and a portrait of someone I don't know by Henrietta Harris (who I also don't know). She's a painter from Middle Earth. She's great.
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