MARTIN FREGEAU

In the Studio

Time-lapse of the painting process

Excerpt from the Studio Journal

Reflections and notes from the creative process

« I took this photo with a telephoto lens, which produced a very blurred, almost vaporous background. The photo was slightly overexposed. Normally, this kind of detail should have been a warning sign to a sensible painter.

I was clearly not one.

The work quickly proved to be much more complex than expected. Right from the sketching stage, something resisted. The photograph contained very few strong shadows, and the volumes of the face were extremely subtle. The features seemed almost to float in the light.

Then came the skin tone. Too dark, and she no longer looked like the photograph. Too pale, and I was dangerously entering the aesthetic territory of a nineteenth-century commemorative portrait.

So I repainted the face enough times to lose any moral right to make fun of perfectionists

And despite all the corrections, adjustments and moments of doubt, I think I now understand why this portrait resisted me so much. I wasn’t simply looking for a likeness. I was trying to paint a presence. Her gentleness. Her calm. That subtle expression you notice.

And that kind of thing is difficult to confine to a few tubes of paint.”