I did this portrait of Augusten Burroughs from a photo he had posted on his website. During the lulls - when portrait commissions aren't coming in - I like to keep my painting skills honed by painting interesting faces I find online. This piece measures 18"x24".
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What a life he's lived. I saw him last year at USM, speak. He was wonderful, of course. How could he not be?
And I had him sign my journal, right in my journal, on that day's page. He was very understanding of my request of him to do so, without wincing that I hadn't bought one of his books right then and there. Good sport, he was.
I may have asked him as an audience member, before the end of his talk, about the function of humor when writing out what can only be imagined, if one imagines things as they are, to be decidedly other than (only) humorous.
It was then, or another time, perhaps on some podcast of him I once listened to, that I heard him say how he wouldn't and couldn't have written out his story had he not done so with lots of humor ladled like overflowing gravy atop a mound of butterless mashed potatoes that would be far less appetizing without something very thick and imperatively opaque poured over it. That's my simile, not his. He'd come up with something much funnier.
Oh, and I LOVE the portrait!
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