Portraiture has been with us for so many centuries that you might think the topic has been exhausted. However, much like figurative painting in general, portraits remain a fascinating pictorial exercise with as many different approaches as there are artists.

What I like, as primarily a landscape painter, is the remarkable change of scale that results when painting a portrait. Where the landscape painter is dealing with miles, the portraitist is focusing on inches. The same tools of the trade and the same hand to eye motions are involved. The face starts to appear almost by magic just as the essential elements of the landscape start to come together on the canvas. Success, when it occurs at both ends of the spectrum, is gratifying.