One false move and bang! The likeness is ruined and everyone knows it. Why put myself through it? Why not take photos and be done with it?

Portraits take time; but can result in timelessness. Photographs take a moment in time; and there they stay. When I take a photograph, I wait for an opportunity and use a machine to copy it; when I paint a portrait, I accumulate what I have seen and felt over time, and use my eyes, my hands, my feelings, and a million tiny judgments to create it. Cameras see two dimensions; we experience more. To cameras, we delegate the act of seeing; to portraits, we give ourselves to the art of looking.