In a new twist on the blended family, both Mary and Joe Ferguson’s mothers and an aunt, all in their 80s, moved in with the Laguna Beach, Calif., couple two years ago.
Since then, they’ve developed a couple of daily rituals. Mary Ferguson gets up first and puts on a pot of coffee. The older women filter in around 7 and take a place at the kitchen table, where they drink coffee, read the paper and plot the day ahead, which may include a Red Hat Society outing, a bowling date, hair appointments or a class at UC Irvine.
No matter how busy it gets, the older gals gather for cocktail hour at 5 sharp. Mary’s mother, Mary Pratt, 87, and Joe’s mother, Lois Ferguson, 89, drink juice. Aunt Mag Ferguson, 83, always has a gin-and-tonic, no lime.
“It’s an era in our life that won’t last forever,” says Mary Ferguson, a retired marketing executive. “We know this is a special time, and a photo just doesn’t capture it.” Instead, she commissioned a portrait from artist Regina Jacobson.
Still in progress, it shows Mary Pratt with her hand on her cheek and a knowing glint in her eyes; while Lois, in the middle, wears a soft, gray sweater and looks a little bashful, and Aunt Mag, on the right, dressed in a blouse with a jaunty sailboat print, grins happily. They’re seated at the kitchen table with a coffee cup and bifocal glasses, ready to start the day.
In an era of the cellphone camera, the digital camera and the camcorder, many people are moving against the current and commissioning portrait artists to capture their loved ones in oil on canvas for the ages.
More likely than not, the subjects are not dressed in velvet and lace or posed stiffly by marble fireplaces or seated in ornate, antique chairs. Instead, they’re gathered around the breakfast table, covered in sand on the beach, enjoying a drink at a pub or seated on a park bench with their beloved, aging Labrador retriever.
Reflecting the casual tenor of the times, the modern portrait is more likely to be lighthearted, even humorous, anything but formal and stuffy. And they often aim to reveal subtleties of personality and family dynamics rather than conveying status or wealth.
“Californians don’t want heavy European paintings. They don’t want heavy drapery and formal poses,” says Michael Hallinan, a Laguna Beach artist. “People want to reflect the world they live in.” Hallinan, an Impressionist, specializes in large portraits of children, mothers and their children and families walking or at play on the beach.
While the waves, whitewash and sand in his portraits are depicted in broad brushstrokes and bright colors, the figures themselves are more detailed and defined. His works sell for $1,500 to $3,500 and up, depending on the size of the painting and the number of figures depicted.
“It has to be better than a likeness. You have to nail it. It has to be them,” he says. “One palm tree looks pretty much like another, but people don’t.” Like other modern-day Van Eycks and Sargents, Hallinan relies on photographs to help him capture his subjects’ individuality. Snapshots are partly a convenient visual aid, and partly a modern necessity.
“People don’t pose for portraits anymore,” he says. “Their pagers and beepers are going off.”
The people in portraits by Scott Methvin, another Laguna Beach artist, often look like they’re having fun, too. His paintings tend to capture slices of everyday life. Whether they are large canvases filled with hundreds of meticulously rendered details or small portraits that seem to give off a soft, candlelit glow, his commissioned portraits also tell a story.
Take his painting of two brothers at Salt Creek beach in Dana Point, Calif. It shows one boy, who’s buried in the sand so that only his face and red head are visible, and the other, a lanky kid in blue trunks, sprawled beside him, grinning from ear to ear. Their father, an amateur photographer, took a photo of them while on vacation, and hired Methvin to give it permanence as an oil painting.
To compose the painting, Methvin found the spot on the beach where the photo was taken and spent a couple of hours shooting his own photographs.
He came back with photos of a family under an umbrella, a lifeguard in the center of a knot of beach-goers, surfers and boogie boarders, seagulls overhead and the Ritz-Carlton on the bluffs above the beach.
He arranged them around the main event, the two brothers, carefree and happy on a sunny afternoon.
His paintings can take countless hours to complete, and cost as much as $16,000 for large works or $3,500 for a small portrait.
Right now, he’s working on a series of small portraits of three of his nieces, who are 7, 9 and 11 years old. He says they’re among the most difficult subjects imaginable precisely because they are so beautiful.
“You can’t make too many mistakes with a young girl. You make a mistake and it’s glaring,” he says.
Mary Ferguson said she had to persuade her mother and the others to pose for the portrait.
Jacobson charges between $7,000 and $15,000 for her portraits, known for being larger-than-life-size, bold and flooded with humor and warmth.
On the easel in her studio in Orange is a work-in-progress, a wry portrait of her friend Joselyn Miller wearing an expression of unapologetic distaste or contempt. Measuring 4 feet by 4 feet, the painting is called “Great Big Brat.”
“People are excited to be taken outside of formal rules. They want something different,” Jacobson says. “I would say portraiture is really in a comeback.” Ferguson has an idea why.
“As wonderful as photographs are, a photo doesn’t last forever. A portrait does,” she says. “And it will be passed down. It’s a legacy.”
