- But when Tal is the artist who paints you – it makes it a lot easier. While I was enjoying Vancouver – Tal was at home working on this little oil portrait from a picture she took on one of our trips to Ein Hod.
It was painted very quickly, with oils mixed with Winsor & Newton Liquin on a shallac coated canvas. The combination of the dry surface and Liquin makes the paint dry very fast.
Can you see yourself painted?
Most people, I dare say, are very sensitive to the way other people see them, and often when we do someones’ portrait we find that there is a gap between the way a person look to us when we paint him/her to the way that person sees himself, or want to be seen.
A funny story I read about Rembrandt Van Rijn: An important Catholic Italian collector visited Rembrandt studio in Amsterdam one day. He was looking around the studio when finally he stood before Rembrandt and asked “Why do you always paint Jesus looking like a Jew all the time? “, “well”, he answered, “Jesus WAS a Jew“, “I know that, but why” the Italian kept on pressing “why do we have to be reminded of that all the time?!” 
In the old European religious paintings Jesus was painted as what they imagined that the son of god look like: white, long blond hair, with light color eyes. When he probably looked like that:
(My Christian and Jewish friends – It is just a joke. Don’t send me any bomb threats or anything like that!)
In my visit to Vancouver with Beit Halochem, I got to meet the Mayor Sam Sullivan, a very nice and charming man. After the they took our picture together, he said: “Did you know that I am also a Jew?” Everyone there were surprised. “Well, I actually belong to an old sect of Judaism – Christianity!”
This is what I looked like when I did a self portrait: 
My hearing aid annoyed me, so I decided to paint the way I feel when I wear it. With large elephant like ears.
Very different isn’t it?
