In using the camera as a preparatory tool for painting, I prefer spontaneous photos of my subjects as opposed to "staged" or "posed" shots. What I seek is a moment when the subject is no longer confronting the camera, but is reacting directly to me or concentrating on something beyond myself. This could also be a moment of deep introversion, where the dramatic expressions of extroversion shut down and the placid expression of introversion creates a vacuum that sucks me into their thoughts. On the other hand, it is just as desirable to be aggressively assaulted by an expression of extroversion. In both cases, there is an attempt of psychological penetration on my part. In this sense, I become the voyeur lifting the veil on those private thoughts most guarded by the subject.
With such a photo in hand, I begin the process by which I extract only those emotions which most effect myself. Inevitably, this is the point at which I abandon representational portraiture and begin to inject objective and subjective elements that do not exist in the original subject or its environment. As a portrait progresses, its physical and spiritual presence becomes a pliable mass of intellect and form from which I develop my own character.
In the end, the initial voyeuristic act has matured sequentially from subject, to fantasy, to self-exposure and of course, to my own vulnerability.
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