Justine Fernie's Paintings: Children's Portraits

My most favourite projects are most definitely portraits. I love trying to capture a moment of time of a specific person and most especially, children. I have had the privilege of working on many, many portraits of children over the past several years.

Lucas & Zachary Carbonaro

2007

acrylic on canvas

48"w x 36"h

commissioned by Anna & David Carbonaro

The portrait above is of my friend Anna's two gorgeous boys, Lucas & Zachary. Anna provided me with several pictures of both kids but the interesting thing about this portrait is that the photos were not current photos of the boys. Anna chose her favourite pictures of her boys, from special times in their lives that were of particular significance to her. Zachary's "Bob the Builder" shirt left an indellible image in Anna's head (can he fix it?) as did Lucas' day of eating LOTS of watermelon. When picturing Zachary, the first thing that comes to my mind is his lucious, all encompassing smile which I tried to capture using sunny bright colours. Lucas is slightly more reserved than Zachary, so I chose to paint him with a lot of my favourite blue, Phalo blue. Anna has told me that the work is a great conversation piece. She said that at first people do not necessarily recognize the portrait to be of her children--the longer people stare at it, the more the image and who it is of, becomes apparent. It is my interpretation of what her children look like.

The Brady Children

2008

acrylic on canvas

4 x 16" squares

commissioned by Mark Brady

Another of my favourite children's portraits was for a local family made up of one big brother (Kieran) and the triplets (Neave, Seamus & Eamon), commissioned by Mark Brady for his wife Alison. I had lots of photographs to work from and four amazingly bright personalities to try to show on canvas. While I don't typically paint "natural" hair colour on my portraits unless I am asked to by a client, I couldn't help but paint the three boys with shades of brown and Neave with a crazy, fiery red. Being the only girl in a sea of boys, she most certainly had to stand out (and from what I've heard, I don't think it's too hard for her to stand out!). I haven't seen too much of Kieran lately but do see the triplets (and hear them) around the neighbourhood. You cannot help but smile at the pure sight of them.