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Issue link: https://digital.miamilivingmagazine.com/i/1543371
While in the many years past I had painted everything, from a foot in the grass to a golden valley with Peruvian horses in distant perspective, to a chinoiserie vase in the Antibes afternoon sunlight, once these girls stepped into my life it was like a vision came to me, a certain look, a certain style of portraiture that became my signature. Like my Daily, which magazine legend Graydon Carter once called “the most original magazine to come out in decades,” my portraits aim to feel truly unique, and I have my muses to thank for that. ML: Your “Models” series captures life-size portrait paintings of women at the very beginning of their journeys, before fame and transformation. What does that fleeting moment represent to you personally? I addressed this in the previous question. ML: The “About a Girl” series began with a chance meeting with a young girl named Jacqueline. What was it about that moment that stayed with you deeply enough to become a body of work? Jacqueline was 10 years old and the atmosphere of her face moved me instantly. She often had early dinner with her grandmother at La Colombe d’Or in St. Paul de Vence, in the South of France where my husband and I have spent many summers. We got to know each other and learn her story, which is too private to recount here, but suffice it to say she invited me to her house which was perched on a cliff and had a steep stairway leading to a wild natural garden, where she introduced me to her little menagerie: a huge white dog name Attila, a pheasant named Louis, a goose, two ducks, a giant turtle and a big fat parrot who repeated just one phrase: Pas Possible! I thought of her a lot and painted her a lot. She was an enormous inspiration. I could paint only Jacqueline for a year – but my gallerist won’t let me! ML: Your work often explores a kind of beauty that feels emotional, even haunting, rather than purely aesthetic. What makes beauty ‘unfathomable’ to you? It’s impossible. You marvel at it, you treasure every second of it, because it is fleeting. It’s a sublime light that is only shed on a human briefly. That’s what I mean about a moment in time. Beauty continues throughout life, but the unfathomable phase is brief and intangible, a divine whisper. ML: When someone stands in front of one of your portraits for a long time, what do you hope is happening inside them? One of my collectors told me that my painting has lifted her when she was down, has shared in her joy, and has become the centerpiece of her home and in a certain way, her life. It speaks to her, they communicate, it is what art does, it creates an eternal dialogue with the human who looks at it, REALLY looks at it. Portraits are unique that way. Unlike a landscape or still life or an abstract piece, you truly must bond with it, it is a person that will look you in the eye for a long, long time. You have to fall in love with each other, the portrait and you. ML: You’ve lived such a rich, internationally creative life. At this moment, in your studio, what feels most alive and inspiring for you right now?