Being painted

By Sarah Kent

Nothing prepared me for the pink-haired extrovert who arrived armed with her portfolio. Tess’s passion for painting and her interest in people show through in portraits that have genuine warmth and vitality; but it was her personality as much as her work that melted away my reservations. I agreed to sit for her, despite the fact that modelling is my idea of hell. I scarcely ever sit down unless I am eating or working, so posing for an hour at a stretch would require a degree of passivity completely alien to me. I also hate being scrutinised. When I was a practising artist I used to draw myself incessantly and perhaps in the back of my mind is lodged the idea that, since I haven’t yet finished examining my face, I am not ready to expose it to someone else’s gaze. In any case, I find images of myself embarrassing. I’m the one who contrives to be absent from the group photograph or pulls faces when I can’t escape the lens.

I don’t regret my decision for a minute. Tess is incredibly good at what she does. Portraiture must be one of the most difficult genres to master. You have to work in company – to establish a rapport with your sitter while, at the same time, concentrating on the difficult task of making a picture that satisfies both you and your subject. Tess can capture a likeness with enormous fluency and speed and, because movement doesn’t disturb her concentration, you don’t have to freeze into the kind of mummy-like stasis that kills an image. She talks freely while she works and so is excellent company. She makes you relax far more ably than most interviewers or photographs whose jobs depend on putting you at your ease. I enjoyed our sessions and my pleasure shows in the final picture, I think. There’s no sign of the ennui that makes bad portraits so leaden. On the contrary, I seem alert and alive, as though engaging in a dialogue.