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Jerry Ommert sounds like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein as he ponders the pieces of his new jigsaw puzzle. "I like this pose with the horse head," he says, shuffling a half-dozen black-and-white photographs around on a table. "I can cut it off here and move her arm.
See this picture of her eyes? I'm gonna bring those out. I'm gonna put that head on this pose, then I'm going to move this arm up and get rid of the chin."
It's all more benign than it sounds, though. Ommert makes his living as a portrait painter, and all of that mental cutting-and-pasting is merely a precursor to capturing on canvas a skilled rendition of a client and her horse.
Ommert, 57, is a quiet, amiable guy with a wry sense of humor whose career in art really began when he painted his first oil work at the age of 12. That was in his native Pennsylvania where, after college and a stint in the Air Force, he ran his own sign painting and graphic arts company for several years.
Then, in 1996, Ommert and his wife, Brenda, sold the business and took a three-year sabbatical, traveling throughout Europe and the United States. When it came time to get back to work, the couple moved to Las Vegas and Ommert decided to focus on oil paintings -- and, in particular, portraits -- commissioned by clients.
For Ommert, the creative process usually begins with photos -- many photos, as many as 100 of them -- that capture as many facets of his subject's physical likeness as he can.
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