I remember when I was I kid, my aunt called me a dirty blond. She was of course referring to my hair color at the time, but I thought she was insulting me. I cried.  The photograph from yesterday is from that period (the late 1950s). You can tell that my hair is light-colored. I was out in the sun all the time.

I captured the essence of my expression in today’s portrait. I made the face as large as I could while keeping enough room to allow the viewer to see the tilt of the head.

My aim is to arrive at a sort of formula in the way Jawlensky did in his Variations and Meditations portraits. Maybe I want to experience or at least understand the meditative state that he describes during his time painting; ” I sit at my work. These are my most beautiful hours. I work for myself, for myself alone and for my god. …My work is my prayer – a passionate prayer uttered in paint. …” (Jawlensky: Heads, Faces and Meditations Praeger Publishers, New York, Washington, London 1971, pg 18).  Jawlensky said this at a time when he was suffering with a painful illness, which figures into parts of the extended quotation that I omitted. There are issues within me that complicate spiritual connection between me and my art, but I still would like to find a niche within which I can create my equivalent of a ‘passionate prayer’

Dirty Blond
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block