Picture This

Today I am a subject. I am sitting for...not exactly a portrait, but a practice study by my friend Kit Cossart. Why? Because he’s trying to get away from landscape painting and shift to people, that’s why.

And here I am, a convenient human in a neighborhood with more cows than humans, and a retired human at that, one who is willing to slow down and be sketched on a random Tuesday afternoon. Besides, he’s letting me keep my computer with me, so I’m tapping away, which is probably what I would be doing anyway.And you get to watch.

The truth is, if Kit were trying to capture the essence of me, there would be motion involved, since I never actually sit still, but Kit says my essence is not what he is trying to capture.

"What are you trying to capture?" I ask, because I'm trying to blog about it. "What's this about?"

What this is about, Kit tells me, is a big, beautiful, gaudy frame around a canvas his grandmother painted long ago. “It wasn't a very good painting, but I sure liked that frame,” said Kit, who has a knack for salvaging and reusing old railroad ties and redwood fencing, antique glass and weathered bricks, and all sorts of other forgotten treasures, incorporating them into the houses he builds, or turning them into art. Kit knew he'd like to use that old frame for something eventually.

Not too long afterwards, Kit was in the home of a friend who is an art collector, and an early nineteenth century portrait of a young, dark-haired girl caught his attention. The girl was wrapped in a scarlet cape and held a tiny purse. Beneath the cape her dress was painted in dark flat tones that emphasized her pale complexion. Most arresting of all was the girl's straight, clear-eyed gaze and disinterested teenage expression. It wasn't the work of a master, but it was an arresting and memorable picture.

“That's when I decided I would like to try my hand at portraits," said Kit, "and I’d like to make one that would work with that frame of my grandmother's. And I started thinking about who I knew that might go along with my learning experience, someone who would indulge something sort of odd and whimsical like this.”

And that's where I come in! As you can see, it isn't as though I perceive myself as anyone's muse or model or inspiration here. I am, as I said, the somewhat happenstance subject for a few practice sketches that may eventually turn into a portrait worthy of Kit's grandmother's eccentric and gaudy frame, and it's interesting, and an honor to be involved.

Besides, this is what friends do. Especially if they are writers and artists and other creatively aspiring types. We support each other...right?And you, dear readers, get to glimpse this process, so I'm putting Kit on the spot here, but let's hope that eventually we get to see a finished portrait of someone (vaguely but not necessarily me) within that frame and posted on this blog.

In the meantime, here's a preliminary sketch. She looks a little tired and sad, whoever she is. I sort of wish she had posed or worn her contact lenses or even brushed her hair. But she's only a work in progress, after all.

Instead of a tiny purse, the woman in Kit's finished painting will be holding a laptop.

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