Last week, I threw up my hands at trying to explore or even reconcile all of my ideas at once, and decided to focus for awhile on the aspect of my work that deals with portraiture (I've posted a few classics of the genre here - by Velasquez, Singer-Sargent, and Klimt). I had been frustrated at the small number of paintings I had completed in the last couple of months (despite endless hours in the studio), and I felt that narrowing my options would help me move forward more quickly. Ironically, the decision has helped me in ways I didn't expect - rather than narrowing my practice, it has actually begun to bring all the seemingly disparate pieces together. And now the mish-mash of paintings that I've been contemplating these last many weeks suddenly make sense as a whole - as that dreaded "body of work". It seems the last couple of months have been more fruitful than the meagre number of recent paintings might indicate.

This latest development occurred to me while reading the first few pages to the catalogue from a 2005 exhibition at the Prado Museum entitled "The Spanish Portrait: From El Greco to Picasso" (and lord, what I would have given to see that show!!). Describing the history of portraiture in Spain, the author raises a few key points (key for me, at least, since I would argue that these issues that relate to the historical portrait are still applicable today in many respects, albeit in more subtle and complex ways):

1. The portrait's early connection to the wealthy and powerful, "who used the greatest artists of their time to propagate their own image", where "portraits were more concerned with the attributes of social or professional status than with individual identity.

2. The portrait's association with idealizing certain modes of behavior and glorifying individuals of a certain "...'quality' who were worthy of imitation".

3. The importance of indicators of wealth or status in portraits, including the sitter's clothing/fashion (I am aware of at least two books discussing this with respect to particular artists: "Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt's Paintings" by Marieke de Winkel, as well as "Whistler, Women and Fashion" by Margaret F. MacDonald).

4. The tense relationship between fiction versus reality in image-making.

And I only read up to page 25. And although it's all just about the portrait, the themes that I've been addressing in my work are all there. Which gives me a new-found confidence that I am on the right track. And all those (new and improved) paintings that I've been planning are finally ready to go. Giddyup.