How Helen Schjerfbeck taught me to paint portraits.
Added 2025-07-08 12:15:26 +0000 UTC“Let us avoid executing so precisely and exactly, that our work closes the way instead of opening it, let us imply” H. Schjerfbeck c. 1916
During the 2020s I painted mostly portraits and self portraits. At the time I was looking deeply at the work of the Finnish painter Helen Schjerfbeck (1862-1946). I had known about her work since my early 20’s as there was a retrospective of her painting at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan around 2001 and I owned the catalog to that show. One of the main lessons she taught me was how to utilize opaque passages of paint. She has an incredible way of flattening her values, like that of Manet. She also utilizes flat patches of chromatic color, almost scratched into the surface. She taught me how to see nature in a non-literal way. Here are process pics of an oil portrait I made for a friend in Paris. Notice that there are two layers here. The first, a greenish compressed layer (using sap green, raw umber and white) and the later, a bolder more chromatic layer. It’s the playful abstraction of shapes that I adore in her work and the rough textures of patchy paint applied flat onto the surface of the panel. She also has an interesting way of exposing and utilizing line in her tonal paintings. The exposed line becomes an abstract entity in the work.
Comments
Thank you for this post!
Dave Lebow
2025-08-21 01:43:29 +0000 UTCHello Colleen, Thank you for sharing your process and your work so generously. The way values and shapes are simplified in your paintings feels so elegant and harmonious, there's so much clarity with minimal information it feels like. What kind of exercise would you recommend to develop that skill? Is there a course or practice method that helps strengthen this ability to edit rather then to put all the little variations of light ?
Reno snz
2025-07-30 21:11:09 +0000 UTCAbsolutely it’s very true. This revelation comes from studying Helen’s work.
colleen barry
2025-07-08 13:11:44 +0000 UTCI'm not sure when It happens, you could tel me better, but around 2017-2018 I think I began to see more and more of that flat / shape-strategic thinking both in your teaching and your work. Of course shapes always were there but more as a tool to be precise optically than a tool of artístic design/arrangement. Perhaps is related with that non naturalistic investigation
Ariel Gulluni
2025-07-08 13:01:24 +0000 UTC
