A writer's view: Portrait of My Mother

"Yolanda in Sunhat," pastel on illustration board

Looks aside, I feel that I was born to model...to sit still, then move and contort to transport someone else's vision from imagination to reality...to become an object for short blips of time and swallow an array of discomforts for the sake of capturing a moment and calling it art. Or perhaps you could say it was a case of nurture over nature.

When my mother asked me to pose for a painting or photograph, I was always willing and patient. At 7, I sat in an awful blue gown (which I fancied at the time) in the humidity of our unairconditioned livingroom so that my mother could do my portrait in pastel. I loved that she drew me wearing delicate black shoes and tights when I was actually barefoot. And somehow I looked better, more polished than I thought I looked, even with my octagonal eye glasses. I still remember feeling the sweat dripping down my cheek and not caring, but rather focusing on the importance of my stillness.

Later, she snapped photos and painted those, making my outpouring of sweat unnecessary. Posing for the camera was much more fun anyway. I loved jumping in and out of outfits, wigs and locations quickly, for the thrill of creating, if only imagined until she developed the film.

-YNF 2006

Yolanda, 7 years old, pastel on canvas

PORTRAITS: The Artist as a Young Woman

By TOVA NAVARRA

"Draw me," said my aunt while sitting next to me at a Menlo Park Mall Art Show in the 1970s. I was hoping to sell the artwork I'd lugged there, in the era of the mall art show, and I used to believe in that battle, the mall always won.

"What? I can't draw you," I said. But she insisted and there was gnarling and gnashing and I took out my charcoal pencil and pad and started making marks on it that---Hmmmm!---began to look like my aunt. Now a crowd gathered around. Before I got to the finishing touches of my aunt's portrait, someone shouted, "Hey, would you draw me? How much do you charge?"

I did 28 charcoal portraits on-the-spot that afternoon. The price I put on them? Two fifty a piece. Two dollars and fifty cents. See, those were the times when I didn't reason that $2.50 was a fancy hot dog, not a work of art. Stupid, stupid girl. Generous, eager, modest. After all, I wasn't Rembrandt.

No, I wasn't. But now I realize that no matter what, Rembrandt probably never equated his precious scratchings with a large cookie, or worse, with "just something I tossed off."

Art is not what an artist blurts out mindlessly even if it seems a projectile rendering. Rather, it is something that lurks and smolders deep down until it senses a crack of light and then---pow!

It bursts into the material world. One particular style? Seems unnecessary, at least for me. I remember sitting (clothed) for a local art group in which one artist had decided every subject's face was round. My face was not round, and her portrait sank into oblivion as, well, that of a woman with a round face, not my face. Haven't sat for a portrait since then, 25-some years ago. I prefer to be the artist.

A statuesque blonde commissioned me to do her portrait. I arrived at her house and smack in the middle of a marital row. As she sat and I sketched, the husband ranted, "Well, now I know where your priorities lie!" Her eyes registered humiliation but she sat silent, and he eventually left. I imagined what might have happened to the portraits of women by da Vinci, Rubens, Sargent, had some man childishly tried to thwart them.

In my career, the big question consistently was: How do you get the likeness? I don't know, save that I look at the person's features, how unique all the shapes and lines, and take in the person's essence. I leave the medium to the one commissioning the piece. Some prefer canvas; some like it hot. Everyone is far more concerned and fascinated with the quality of the likeness than anything else.

I've made countless portraits of my children, for posterity as well as practice. I made several self-portraits, one of which allegedly scares them and on that count may be the best likeness of me. Then the camera stole my heart and became my brushes for a while, although I usually have a pen and pad at the ready for the quick portrait on a plane, in a restaurant.

The one sketching is more noticeable than one with a camera, I've discovered. Oooooh....is she drawing that boy with the striped shirt? Is she drawing...me? I adore instigating this curiosity. It convinces me that art still woos people.

Self-portrait by Tova Navarra

Tova Navarra is an accomplished author, journalist, artist and nurse, whose work is acknowledged by "Who's Who of American Women." She has written more than 25 books, using her expertise on the subjects of art, writing, health and photography. She has also written a how-to for children, "On My Own: Helping Kids Help Themselves" (Barron's, 1993), children's fiction, a novel and plays. Some of her artwork is available for sale. To learn more, email her at tovanavarra@aol.com.

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