Mitchell’s palette is based on the suggestions of Michael Wilcox, who has written several books on color. “Because I scramble up the impasto with the end of my brush so the viewer can see down to the layer below, I have to think about how much color is going to be revealed as well as what color glazes are going to go on top of this thick layer.” “I have to think about how it’s going to be influenced by subsequent layers in order to get the color I want in the final stage.” Rembrandt employed both the thin layers of a glaze and the thick layers of the impasto technique, which also strongly affected how he achieved a desired color. For instance, since the original color may be glazed several times, “conceiving the color becomes really tricky,” Mitchell explains. The layering of glazes offered new challenges. This idea excited Mitchell because he had been painting wet-in-wet and putting down his colors directly. Rembrandt’s forms were built using many layers, and Mitchell asserts that the layers themselves were what Rembrandt was focusing on. This made him want to discover how the Dutch master worked, and the biggest lesson learned was the importance of layers.
After spending two years looking at a reproduction of Rembrandt’s 1669 self-portrait, Mitchell realized that he never grew disenchanted with the expression of the sitter or the painting itself. Mitchell’s portraits are, in large part, based on the techniques of Rembrandt. “The whole point of the show is to make a personality present both through the words written by the subjects and through the paintings-each portrait is always to be accompanied by words submitted by the person pictured.” “The paintings are done life-size,” says Mitchell.
Mitchell conceived the idea for this nonprofit project in 2005, and from the beginning he sought to emphasize the importance of some traditional ideas in portraiture, including the scale of the pieces. This article collection 100 Faces of War Experience Project.Ī few years ago, Massachusetts artist Matthew Mitchell was working as an illustrator and painting alla prima in oil for pleasure when he determined two things: First, that glazing and scumbling offer the opportunity to add more depth to a portrait, and second that “I found I was most happy when I was able to reduce an illustration to essentially just someone’s face.” These two ideas intersected in Mitchell’s current project, the 100 Faces of War Experience, a multiyear undertaking that will eventually encompass 100 portraits of people who have traveled from America into Iraq or Afghanistan to serve in either a civilian or military role during the recent wars. Oil painter Matthew Mitchell adapts Rembrandt’s working method for his portraits spotlighting Americans serving in civilian or military roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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