Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in The Grove:    Portrait

The reason some portraits don’t look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.
~Salvador Dali

I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody said that she does not look like it, but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.
~Gertrude Stein

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.
~Salvador Dali

EndQuote:
It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.
~James Whistler

 

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Exercise Prompt for 03/28:   recipe

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your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it’s all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.
~Chuck Palahniuk

Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.
~Lucian Freud

Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.
~Jamie Wyeth

Who can take Death’s portrait? The tyrant never sat.
~Edward Young

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If I declare it to be so, then this is a portrait.
~Robert Rauschenberg

A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In all that surrounds him the egotist sees only the frame of his own portrait.
~Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.
~Edvard Munch

 

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Posted from the Grove

What a business is this of a portrait painter! You bring him a potato and expect he will paint you a peach.
~Gilbert Stuart

A good portrait is incredibly hard to create, there is too much temptation to pander to the individual rather than portray them as they really were.
~Philippe Halsman

When having my portrait painted I don’t want justice, I want mercy.
~Billy Hughes

That moment when the person actually dictates the way I do the portrait is when the intimacy arrives.
~Francesco Clemente

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None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer.
~Imogen Cunningham

The longing of my heart is a fairy portrait of myself: I want to be pretty; I want to eliminate facts and fill up the gap with charms.
~Mark Twain

When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don’t have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes – they’re not part of the good picture you want.
~Andy Warhol

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they’ll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly.
~Michael Crichton

You have no idea what portrait painters suffer from the vanity of their sitters.
~Kenneth Clark

Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven’t I the right to paint you as I want?
~Oriana Fallaci

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One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

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~Purple Disco Machine:  Fireworks   (4:28)   generational west side story, a dance
https://vimeo.com/523206857

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~Dea eny:  Bob Dylan ~ another self portrait   (11:52)   yet another try
https://vimeo.com/72874484

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~The DietrichGroup:  Portrait   (3:05)   interpretive dance ~ nsfw
https://vimeo.com/241122297

 

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Your dreams are the product of your longings, a portrait of your potential, and a promise of your future.
~Erwin McManus

I like A&E. I like those corny intimate-portrait things. They’re so kind of ingenious and artificial and soothing.
~Mary-Louise Parker

The danger, I find, is that you can become too formulaic, like some commissioned portrait painters who develop a methodology.
~Jamie Wyeth

Self-deceit is a most damaging trait. The remedy, for an artist, is to paint a self-portrait!
~Scott Kahn

The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.
~Henri Matisse

The portrait I do best is of the person I know best.
~Nadar

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Pre-planning is essential. Research, research, research. If you are going to do a portrait, know as much as you can about the person beforehand. The web makes this very easy.
~Peter Menzel

That’s my idea of what a portrait ought to be, anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind.
~Walker Evans

You know, if one paints someone’s portrait, one should not know him if possible.
~Otto Dix

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
~John Singer Sargent

The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences.
~Jacob Epstein

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VIDEO:

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
~Diane Arbus

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks.
~Richard Avedon

I believe that everyone wears a mask, and beneath that mask is another mask. So what photographers can reveal are the various masks we all wear.
~Matthew Rolston

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion -an occasion rather than a truth. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
~Richard Avedon

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The facts of the present won’t sit still for a portrait. They are constantly vibrating, full of clutter and confusion.
~William Macneile Dixon

I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait.
~Richard Greenberg

 

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~Omeleto:  Mascarpone   (14:02)   ditzy fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THMwV7GxmEc

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~Omeleto:  Whispers Among Wolves   (17:14)   character study
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGJqY3zQFXg

 

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We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us.
~Andre Gide

For me, a good portrait shows the fragility and humility of the person, and at the same time a strength, a resting in themselves.
~Wolfgang Tillmans

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.
~Henri Cartier-Bresson

Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?
~John Adams

A portrait, to be a work of art, neither must nor may resemble the sitter… one must paint its atmosphere.
~Umberto Boccioni

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And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can’t go.
~Vincent Van Gogh

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
~Oscar Wilde

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A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.
~Robert Hughes

That is my job, right? To comfort him. To keep the portrait of what he left behind intact. Isn’t that a woman’s duty during wartime?
~Suzanne Hayes

Sculpture may be almost anything: a monument, a statue, an old coin, a bas-relief, a portrait bust, a lifelong struggle against heavy odds.
~Malvina Hoffman

 

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MUSIC:

Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even – all must combine to realize a character.
~Charles Baudelaire

We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait (as we have conceived it), in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in.
~Pamela Hansford Johnson

For me a photograph is most successful when it doesn’t answer all the questions, but leaves something to the imagination.”.
~Greg Gorman

Perhaps I have not lined his portrait too clearly. But if he exists, if only for the reason that I have imagined him to be. He came from the blue and returns to the blue. He has not perished, he is not lost. Neither will he be forgotten.
~Henry Miller

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~Filter:  Take a Picture   (4:20)   in lieu of memory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8MAHQhKe7Q

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~Kid Rock:  Picture   feat. Cheryl Crow   (5:01)   prodigal love a 2-way street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKFx0MMqb48

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~Steely Dan:  Peg   (3:56)    her picture, again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoxdZT0VtSQ

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~Lady Gaga: Paparrazi   (7:11)   cinematic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0

 

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I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.
~Nan Goldin

A portrait is like an ornamental headstone. It is not for the subject, but for those who look upon it. For those you want to remember.
~Julie Klassen

Portraits are the most intimate photographs. The image will survive the subject.
~Victor Skrebneski

A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.
~John Singer Sargent

Lorelei sat at the window of her drawing room, painting in the fading daylight. It was yet another portrait of Jack, her favorite piece of fruit.
~Kinley MacGregor

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Some sitters don’t engage with the process of having their portrait painted at all. They’ll think it’s a good opportunity to catch up with all their phone calls.
~Stuart Pearson Wright

To anyone who has served in Washington, there is something oddly familiar about [having your portrait painted]. First, you’re painted into a corner, then you’re hung out to dry and, finally, you’re framed.
~Warren Christopher

Did you know Richard Nixon is the only president whose formal portrait was painted by a police sketch artist?
~Johnny Carson

Beauty is in the eye of the checkbook holder.
~Dean Collins

THING TO TRY: If you are asked to describe a suspect to a police sketch artist, describe in precise detail, the features of the police sketch artist. This is one of the rare instances where two people can do one self-portrait.
~Demetri Martin

I have terrible handwriting. Probably because I hold my pen with two chopsticks. I once wrote a love letter that looked more like a portrait of Rasputin.
~Jarod Kintz

Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.
~Sol LeWitt

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Sandy
© Lucas Bautista

 

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Portraits are supposed to “look within,” but in my opinion very few people have an interior significantly different from the outside portrait.
~Jon Witcomb

Sometimes, in a portrait, I go straight in with paint onto canvas… Other than riding my bike up and down the hills around here, it is the most dangerous thing I do… like tightrope-walking without a safety net!
~David Cobley

I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul – I don’t think this is possible all of the time.
~Annie Leibovitz

Painting someone’s portrait is, of course, an impossible task. What an absurd idea to try and distil a human being, the most complex organism on the planet, into flicks, washes, and blobs of paint on a two-dimensional surface.
~David Cobley

Most portraits are lies. People are rarely what they appear to be, especially in front of a camera. You might know me your entire lifetime and never reveal yourself to me. To interpret wrinkles as character is insult not insight.
~Duane Michals

I believe that photography can only reproduce the surface of things. The same applies to a portrait. I take photographs of people the same way I would take photographs of a plaster bust.
~Thomas Ruff

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You wouldn’t take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you’d move in close.
~Nick Brandt

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.
~Rosamund Lupton

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@Writers Platform

Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies, but their effects are transitory: the new synthetic complex quickly falls apart. Proust’s characters, by contrast, often achieve lasting changes of perspective.
~Philip Kitcher

To demand the portrait that will be a complete portrait of a person is as futile as to demand that a motion picture be condensed into a single still.
~Alfred Stieglitz

Alas, it is just a single image – an extended moment perhaps. Unlike a biography, a portrait cannot present the many differing moments that make up a personality.
~Burton Silverman

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The contents of someone’s bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
~Anatole Broyard

Your library is your portrait.
~Holbrook Jackson

My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author’s portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages.
~Amos Bronson Alcott

 

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Exercise Prompt:   portrait

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Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.
~Jean-Paul Sartre

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
~Blaise Pascal

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.
~Vincent Van Gogh

I would paint a portrait which would bring the tears, had I canvas for it, and the scene should be — solitude, and the figures — solitude — and the lights and shades, each a solitude.
~Emily Dickinson

But a Book is only the Heart’s Portrait- every Page a Pulse.
~Emily Dickinson

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The Exercise:

~BarTalk:

reflection

thin flat of glass
cheap window on the world
yet, placed to face a mirror
self-portrait unobscured

extro versus introspection

mere glass transparent backing, or
cold life with a silver lining
knowledge observed, or
wisdom endured

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process

lascivious eyes
portrait of a cad
her wide expressive eyes
inviting to be had

faded jaded eyes
gone from bad to sad
hooded distant eyes
portrait of a sage

dollar’s weight
on deadened eyes
road’s end an open gate
pass from sage to saint

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encore

wind whipped
streaking
pelting
rain drops
dropping
dripping
pouring
from the eaves

the trees
plant leaves
weeping
overladen
cleansed
an old Kodak moment
portrait past on repeat
happening today

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unpretty ditties  #21

anti-vax and anti-science
guerrilla thinkers in loud defiance
overburdened medics pleading crying
shrill mutineers grow hoarse denying
‘tween those who breathe, those who slumber
both their stories told in the numbers
naysay critics with naught else to offer
’tis their voting list will thin and suffer
wretched luck that skeptics die off
loud alarms for publics prone to nod off

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picture of a party
portrait of a pirate
ship near capsized
climate shanghaied
May Day calls
arrive in tandem
news that galls
votes held for ransom
democracy, d’ mock race be
forgot that mules have memory too
false profit, history’s prophet
rode’n spurred scared voter’s hide
bet the farm on it then fall off it

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5s by 7 drive-byes x 6

collaboration
preserved, her beauty enshrined
portrait envisioned

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justice on the loose
portrait of a paladin
feel-good movies rock

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posed for a portrait
plastic pasted on decal
fixture of a smile

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wed to a hobby
longer hours than a work week
portrait of a slave

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instant of impact
portrait of shared destiny
corner camera feed

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tears are contagious
portrait framed in eulogy
hearts like fragile glass

 

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I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.
~Nan Goldin

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What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.
~Charles Baudelaire

Great portrait photographers are great mythologists.
~Roland Barthes

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The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
~Thomas B Macaulay

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
~Charles Dickens

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If I were an opera singer, I’d have sung you an aria. If I were an artist, I would have painted your portrait. But cooking is what I’m best at.
~Lisa Kleypas

When you are doing portraits, you have that intimacy with someone for a few minutes. For a really good portrait, you don’t take the portrait – it’s given.
~Giles Duley

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Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
~Samuel Butler

Thoughts frame your portrait, action paints it.
~Charles F Glassman

The landscape of any farm is the owner’s portrait of himself.
~Aldo Leopold

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Fellow-Christians, do let us study the Bible portrait of the humble man. And let us ask our brethren, and ask the world, whether they recognize in us the likeness to the original.
~Andrew Murray

If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don’t get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.
~John Piper

Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along the mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself.
~N D Wilson

Bruheem kol dumuyay eloha! Blessed are all God’s self-portraits.
~Richard Zimler

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One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be – though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain – because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.
~Oswald Spengler

I was painting her portrait in the little studio, and when I came to the eyes I stopped, overcome by emotion, and said to her, ‘Have you understood me?’ She nodded affirmatively. ‘Will you be my wife?’ I asked. She made the same affirmative sign.
~Jules Breton

 

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Quotes harvested from: https://azquotes.com, https://brainyquotes.com
https://onportraits.com, https://quotemaster.org, https://wisesayings.com

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Video Harvest: https://vimeo.com, https://youtube.com

 

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