I stopped painting portraits more than thirty-five years ago because I felt unable to capture the real person...I'm not talking about a person's appearance but what they were. How do you capture emotion? In a standard portrait you can do it with clothing, position or style, but you are still left with the physical person not the inner, real person. This, the inner person is what I had wanted to paint for thirty-five years. I have done any number of small sketches and written notes of how it could possibly be done, but none of them gave me the answer of how to get inside and possibly explain whom this person was.

When you ask someone to describe how they remember a grandmother or brother they almost never say 'well my father had blue eyes and the most gorgeous white hair.' Rather, they will inevitably tell you about their personality or psychological makeup, their bits and pieces. They might say 'my grandmother was passionate about astronomy' or 'she read ten books a week and at least one of them was a section of the dictionary which she would read to me.' The whole process is an extraordinary introspective experience. To represent this concept as a painted essay, a memoir, I found the motif by first exploring ways to find the core.

First, the painting needs to be somewhat abstract with perhaps some impressionistic imagery. Second, one has to have some insight, intimacy and subjective knowledge of the person to find a stratagem that will make this painting a portrait. It's a matter of perception, not only by the artist but the viewer as well.

Our computer age helped, at least with the initial imagery. I decided to use an old photograph of a 'sitter' and scan it into the computer. It was pixilated in four or five steps ending with a ten to twelve pixel image. After printing and other arcane manipulations it was placed on the linen canvas.

A frame was painted around the set of photographs to hold in this iconography.
I did this so it would not steal into the abstract part of the painting and distract. With the motif, the essence, and the psychology of the 'sitter,' I was able to do the portraits. I found the whole concept and process intriguing, but I also found something more important...myself. I believe as of today I am still learning about me.

Gloria Garfinkel