The Purpose of Portraits
I've been working on portraits more and more recently; and since lockdown began I've been painting a lot more too. I've written some of my thoughts on modern portraiture and what it means to me. When I first wrote this piece, it quickly spilled out on to the pages of my notebook as an uncontrolled stream of consciousness. I’ve left it as close to it’s original form as possible because that seemed right and true to the moment.
When you’re looking at another person and drawing or painting them; you’re trying to do more than just represent how they look in that moment. You’re trying to capture how they are and understand their experience of the world.
This attempt to understand and capture another person’s experience is why we feel connected, or sometimes feel totally isolated, because we can, or cannot, imagine how they are feeling and what they are experiencing.
Portraiture is like staring deep into someone’s eyes for a long time. Extended periods of eye contact can be so powerful because you are reading someone’s face and simultaneously communicating what you experience, whilst processing and reflecting their experience. You are both solely experiencing one anothers’ presence, which feels great.
The cynical part of me would say it feels so great because it feeds that part of us which desires to be the centre of attention, we’re feeding each others’ ego. I think actually what is occurring is a much deeper connection, communication between the parts of our brains we are not conscious of and a realisation of each other’s conscious experience. Both of your individual experiences are filled with each other. You’re unconsciously telling each other what you’re experiencing, whilst reading the other’s signals. It’s like a feedback loop amplifying and affirming your humanity.
For me, what’s so important and interesting is that none of this is happening consciously. The conscious thoughts we experience, may start as ‘this is weird or uncomfortable’ or ‘what are they looking at’ or ‘oh god, make it stop!’ This is why it’s so overwhelming. You’re experiencing someone experience you. Meanwhile, the processes in our mind that operate outside our field of awareness are signalling to the other person, whilst soaking up and interpreting the signals they broadcast. So, if you can get over the chatter of your conscious mind and just be in that moment you can share an experience of just being in each other’s presence. With this you can know someone else’s experience for an extended moment, and you feel connected. For a few beautiful moments you won’t feel the crushing loneliness and uncertainty of existence bearing down on you.
I believe this is what we’re all seeking from life. Some reassurance that we aren’t the only conscious being in existence. We just want to know that our experience isn’t alone, isn’t an isolated anomaly in a universe full of determined particles or random quantum events. We want to feel that other people are in fact experiencing as well, rather than being mindless zombies or simulations in the computer of a super advanced civilisation.
This is what portraiture can do so effectively: it can show the world that people can look at each other and try to understand them. That we are all having a conscious experience, which we cannot step out of. The artist here needs to become adept at expressing their experience in that moment, but they also need to recognise that the subject is in and of themselves a conscious entity. It’s not a selfish act of the artist saying, ‘this is how I see you’, but more along the lines of ‘I see you and recognise that you’re capable of seeing me too.’ This is what artists need to understand and an expression of this understanding will go beyond capturing the likeness and instil the image with a life of its own. A really successful portrait will become a point of connection between two conscious beings, recognising each other’s awareness.
We are each unique and each moment of our individual experience is also unique, but we are not alone. We’re all making our own way through this reality in a strange trance. We’re fed thoughts and emotions by our unconscious minds. It’s easy to get lost in the rampaging torrent of our own experience and feel isolated and alone. Often our personal experience is mad or mundane, but it’s punctuated with moments of intense beauty and joy.
These beautiful bursts of joy are what we need to celebrate together. The moments that we connect with others are what makes life beautiful. Whether we connect over coffee, over art or the fact that we’re each having this totally absurd, unique and unfathomable experience of consciousness. We all need to take a leap of faith and believe that everyone else is a similar conscious agent too, which may not sound too difficult to many people. Keeping your awareness of that alive when you’re being pushed and pulled by your own inner turmoil or desire is in practice much harder.
Portraiture is a reminder of this. It’s about looking at another person and saying, ‘I recognise that you are a conscious being, having your own unique experience of reality.’ We can never experience exactly what each other’s consciousness is like but that is part of its majesty and alluring beauty.
For now, there will always be this barrier, we cannot know that any other consciousness outside of our own exists. We can open up our own awareness and express more about our own experience so that others can take that leap of faith and recognise that you do actually exist.
Art is not always accessible and often takes some unpacking or decoding, but it gets us closest to each other. It satisfies the part of us that is thirsting for the knowledge of another consciousness in existence.
