Jamie-Lyn Della Selva

“I used to touch the lines on your forehead”
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I think the reason i’m an artist is so that I can generate the people I miss so desperately that I have lost, in front of me. It’s different than a photo in the way that you are pushing life energy onto a page and making them “there”...
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This is a portrait of my father from a photo that I took at a doctor’s appointment that I forced him to go to a few years back. I felt like I could see so much in his face that I hadn’t noticed when I was younger, and I saw how sick he was getting. I made him let me take a photo in the waiting room to do a painting of him and I’m surprised he let me, though he usually learned to listen to me. I did do a painting from this photo, but at the time, it was a really difficult painting for me to work out because we had a complex relationship and I couldn’t make him look the way he actually looked without my personal emotions getting in the way. This time, I just needed to see him, so here he is.
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#charcoal #clayboard #portrait #art #traditionalart #charcoaldrawing #fineart #contemporaryart #drawing
#emotion #grief #love