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In this age of digital photography, why would anybody commission an oil painting? Because, Quintana answers, "I wanted something that is going to last for a while."
An oil painting "looks more real to me," he says. "It's more of the detail, the shadow, the light that's in there."
The painting will be displayed in a cabin Quintana and his wife are building in Utah -- probably next to a second portrait, of Quintana and one of his horses, which he plans to commission next.
Jean Fattoruso commissioned Ommert to do a painting of her granddaughter, Sydney, then 10 months old and now 4 that hangs in her home.
Why? Because, Fattoruso says, a portrait is "so much richer-looking" than a photo.
Ommert's portraits start at $575 for an animal portrait and about $1,000 for a person's portrait, and Ommert says his clients include everybody from factory workers to, well, people with a good deal of money.
For their money, clients are hiring an artist whose creative temperament is a bit different than other artists'.
Ommert says it took him "a full 10 years to be able to completely lose (his) ego and transfer it to the client.
Even during his career as a commercial painter, he says |
"I didn't achieve success until I was able to basically put their own interests above my own silly, little, whatever you want to call it."
But that's satisfying, too, Ommert says. "That's what you get into this for."
Many clients' "biggest fear," Ommert says, is: "Is this guy gonna Picasso me, or is he going to do a painting that's going to be flattering and tasteful?"
"I tell them I'm going to make them look like the best day of their lives in the last five years," Ommert says. The goal, he says, is to "make them look their best without changing them. I call it graphic surgery -- just basically a nip and a tuck."
Portrait painting is, if not a lost art, at least an uncommon one.
It may be a sign of the times that, on his proposal form, Ommert promises that a client's painting "will be drawn and painted by hand" and that "no digital, photographic or mechanical devices are employed."
Still, it's a good thing Ommert can have a sense of humor about such more modern approaches to art. When he's told that all of his mad doctor-like moving around of photos is like something a computer program does, Ommert responds with a sort of grimace.
"Don't say that," he jokes, smiling in feigned fear.
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