Nameless Faces

Last fall I received and email from a man in Florida who wanted me to paint a series of women's faces for him.  He asked me to look through my stash of reference photos and come up with some faces that he might like.  He had previously contacted me and purchased an original painting that I had for sale on Fine Art America.  It is a very popular site for artists to download images of their artwork in order for people to purchase prints and originals.  He seemed to know my artwork well and suggested that I do a close up of a face that I had done in a previous painting that he had seen on my webpage.

 

Enigma

I thought it was a little odd that someone would want a collection of faces of people they didn’t know, but he sent me the full amount of money for each painting in advance, plus extra for shipping.  I was happy to have the commissions.

After the first face was finished and sent, he seemed frustrated that I didn’t have any other faces that he liked in my collection of photographs.  Not wanting to lose another commission, I found a stock photo site on the internet and directed him to look at it.  He loved the site and made a long list of the faces he found interesting.  It was an odd assortment of ordinary to beautiful women.  He had made an orderly list of the ones he wanted and which one I was to start with. 

Amber

Phil was a retired actor and school teacher in his 70’s.  He shared that he had been married briefly and unhappily many years ago.  He had spent some time in the theater, but had felt that he was not good enough to make a career out of it.  So for many years, he had taught acting and english.  He confessed that his life had become very limited because of his age and health but that he loved collecting art.  He felt that it was all he had to look forward to, since he had no children, no close relatives and rarely left the house.  He seemed to have given up on life in many ways.

I understood his love of faces because of his involvement in the theater, and we collaborated over the winter as I painted each one and sent it to him.  Some of them I really liked and others not as much, but I put everything I had into each painting, because I could feel that it brought him some happiness.  I made up names for each of them because it felt wrong to send them out into the world without some identity.

Grandma's Hat

We spoke on the phone several times and emailed each other often to discuss the next painting and just to talk about life.  I found him to be interesting and intelligent and kept nudging him to find something that he could do to reawaken his interest in life.  Phil and I both loved to read, and he often sent me books that he had finished and thought I would enjoy.  I made suggestions of activities that I thought he might enjoy, but nothing seemed to interest him except the anticipation of a new painting.  I knew eventually he would run out of wall space.

After a winter of working together with Phil on 10 paintings, our project came to an end.  I had tried to renew his enthusiasm in life with my artwork and encouragement.  He was a lonely man and strongly needed to connect more with people, but that had to be his decision.

Several months passed before his next email.  He was extremely excited that he had decided to try something that had been a passion of his many years ago.  He had gone to an archery range and found that he could still do it.  Over the next several months I received emails that sounded fun and full of life from him as he ordered all new archery equipment and got better and stronger at something he loved. 

The latest email from Phil told me how much fun he was having getting up early every morning and going to the archery range and how well he was doing.  I am happy for him and his renewed interest in life.  Now he has some real faces in his world that have names and it makes me smile.