If I'm going to try to put my work in context I should really start with the simple but big question of "What is the purpose of portraiture?" Whether painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, videoed or any possible medium why make a "likeness" of a person. The concept of what is a likeness itself can be questioned, but if we start simply with the question "why, pre-photography would someone make a drawing or painting of a person?" It is probably to record what they look like.
Why would you want to record what someone looks like? At a very basic level it is representation, to show them and others what they look like and to have their presence when they are not there, as a reminder or memento. This simple idea of representation, is then complicated by the relationship between subject and portrayer, whether the portrait is commissioned or the subject is paid or whether there is a more complex social relationship occurring.
This intention of the portrait is hidden behind the ostensible purpose of representation, whether it is a dramatic swagger portrait of a monarch such as Ingre's Napoleon I on the Throne or Gainsborough's Mrs Sheriden in a romantic rural idyll. Whatever the setting or scale there is always the supposed purpose of showing what the sitter actually looked like.
Photography took over the job of documentary representation from painting, drawing and the like. They lost this purpose that had given this surreptitious opportunity to imbue subjects with subliminal qualities. The painted portrait became obsolete and liberated at the same time.
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