Portraits

To The Strangers I Have Drawn On A Train

Perhaps you will find my portraiture an encroachment, a violation of privacy, and perhaps you even think it unflattering in its realism. To the first I say yes, because portrayal of any sort is an intimate act, and drawing the most so: my best teacher once told me, “ Drawing is touching.” So in no small way I have touched you, without permission, while you slept or were taken by a view or lost in your own thoughts.
I apologize if I have hurt you thus. Know though, that it was a loving act, to draw you. It is an appreciation of the life you are living, have lived to form such a face. Every line is a caress, a prayer, a tribute to the beautifully enduring, varied, expressive visage of the human race.
It is a record of the wonder of us.