I can’t offer you tea or a nice red wine on the Internet, so
please wander around the paintings.
I hope you enjoy them.

A person's journey through life deserves to be recorded. It deserves the infinite attention of a portrait.

They say the camera never lies. Perhaps, but a photo is like India - it shows how it is in this second in this place, then phut! Vanished ! It's never like that again.

I find that the profound concentration needed to observe the unknown details of a human being make me unconscious of what I am painting. Still, it will unfold layer after layer of magnificent facts. Nor do I know the full truth of what I've painted until years later if my sitter and I have become friends.

Sitting requires patience, however, there are phases of a portrait for which photos will suffice. If the sitter is a stranger, I find the planning of a portrait terrifying - a whole human being, unknown, in my hands! It's far better if we build some conversational ease between us first.

Among the people who have sat for me you might recognise the following: Sam Fullbrook, Winner of the Archibald Portrait Prize and the Wynne Prize, the late Xavier Herbert, author of Poor Fella My Country & Capricornia, Betty Churcher, former Director of the Australian National Gallery and Robert Dickerson, genre artist.

If you would like to commission a portrait, I'll need to get to know you to a degree. If you live overseas or outside Sydney, we can do this by phone calls, videos, slides etc. Painting with the sitter present is my preferred way, but I also work a lot with slides taken from all angles.

Two of these portraits were reconstructed without my having seen the people: Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Leon Phipps.

The living mature face tells it's own story, quite clearly in most cases; but in it's absence I use words to find the essence of the character, researching libraries in the case of Australia's greatest aviator and even a little mathematics; I am proud of the trigonometry I used to lift the Southern Cross off the tarmac and level her out in the sky!

In the case of Leon, who gambled his life to get in the wheat crop and sadly lost, the words are those of his mother; pages of unconditional love which are transparently truthful and objective and full of all the little details only a passionate memory holds.

I wonder if the spirit of this strong-willed young man took a hand because the whole district that knew him swears it is his exact likeness. I was very relieved because, of the five indistinct snapshots available, not one looked anything like another.

PRICES (Australian dollars)

Full figure 4'x 3' ...$7,000

" " 4' 6" x 2' 4"... $6,500

Torso 2'11" x 2' 6".. $5,900

Bust 1' 5" x 1' 6"..$3,500

Head 16" x 12"...$2,500

Pastels 23cm x 30cm; ...$1,000

Painting sizes are easily changed. Prices for groups depend on the size of the painting and the number of sitters.

With regards,
Kathleen Petersen

KP@KathleenPetersenPortraits.com