I must confess I didn't recognize Carson McCullers name when I stopped dead in my Instagram feed when I saw this photo. Upon reading a birthday tribute to the author of 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" all I could think of was that she herself looked hunted, or perhaps haunted. The unattributed photo followed my thoughts, I felt compelled to try to capture that look in her eyes.
Reading a little more about her (like the Wall Street Journal article
here or the mini bio
here) revealed a complex, challenging life. Now I need to decide which of her novels to read first. Please do tell me if you have a favorite.
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| Carson MCCullers - detail by TW Stifel |
This portrait is on stretched canvas with a loose collage of vintage and antique papers adhered as a foundation. I pencil sketched her face. Many erasures later I used Liquitex acrylic paints thinned with gel medium to almost a watercolor transparency to paint her features and shadows. The shirt was sculpted in heavy body acrylic with a palette knife, scraping it pretty hard so the paper was show through. I am pretty happy with how she came out.
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| 99% of the photos of McCullers are somber so I was delighted to see this one on goodreads.com |
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