Sunday, January 15, 2006

On Portraiture and Truthiness

Last night, the brickwife and I, along with our small son, visited our friends house to watch some playoff football. We're Seahawks "fans" and they are Redskins Fans. You can guess who went home happy. Anyway, that's not the point of this.

Our friend is a pretty fantastic painter, especially when it comes to landscapes.

(Sorry, but here's a quick aside. That Steelers-Colts came had a pretty spectacular ending, no?)

Anyway, on the way out to their house yesterday I mentioned that I wanted the brickwife to commision a portrait of me as a birthday gift or something and she said that our friend doesn't do portraits. Then, we got to their house, went in, and what do I see on the easel? That's right, a portrait. Not finished yet, but a portrait nonetheless.

So I decided. When I get a portrait painted of me, I want it to depict me rocking out on a guitar, back-to-back with Tom Petty. You know, just totally wailing away under the lights on a huge stage. Because here's my thought process: why in the world would anyone want to see a painting of me just sitting around? If you really want to see that, just come visit me at work some day. Heck, I'll even be wearing a suit at work! No, I want a picture of me doing something super-cool and almost infinitely unlikey. That would be way better and much more of a conversation starter. So what do you think, Becky? Is this something you could do?

4 comments:

Rebecca said...

We'll just have to get Pete or Ross to do a photo shoot with you and Tom Petty.

Rebecca said...

P.S. Thanks for all the links to my gallery! :D Maybe one of these days Google will notice that I exist ;)

Rebecca said...

Actually if I can find a digital picture of you and if one of Tom Petty - I can make it for you in Photoshop in about an hour. :) Back at the church I worked at I had to do LOTS of photo editing - taking people out of photos when they left the church and adding people in for various odd reasons.

I'm not really that good at painting portraits yet and it takes me a million years to do when I attempt it.

Maggie said...

Then I guess you'll just have to charge a lot. Schuyler's birthday isn't until November, maybe we'll talk.