During a visit to France in late spring, I rented a car in Bagnols-sur-Cèze and drove 500 kilometers to the small hamlet, Sammarçolles, to visit an artist friend, Paul Rhoads. Paul grew up in New York City and at the age of 34 moved to France. I met Paul in the late 2000s when he returned to the U.S. to visit his former art teacher, Aaron Kurzen. I met Aaron around 2000 and became a close friend. Aaron died in 2021 at the age of 101. In the late 70s and through the 80s, Paul lived and worked with Aaron for nearly a decade. After Aaron’s death, a long and difficult probate ensued, complicated by a distrustful executrix of the will. The story is too complicated to recount here, but unexpectedly for me, and as a beneficiary in Aaron’s will, I qualified to inherit the collection of Aaron’s Kurzen’s art (except for the holograms) that totaled nearly 1,900 pieces, mostly drawings but still over 200 paintings and sculptures. An unexpected call from the executrix informed me that I would be the beneficiary of Aaron’s collection. From around 2024 on, I have stored this collection nearby in the Hudson Valley.
In knowing I needed to do something with the collection, I decided to visit Paul at his home in France and discuss Aaron’s life and work. Spending time with Paul, I thought, might help me decide what the possibilities were. Paul, in 2016, self-published a catalogue entitled From Villa Mnemosyne to Hotel Alpha: the work of Aaron Kurzen. A second publication followed in 2023 entitled Cool named after a 1966 Kurzen exhibition entitled Cool at 98.6 fahrenheit. Both publications do a great deal to catalogue and explain the work.
I scheduled two days to be with Paul on the first leg of my journey. Unexpectedly, after putting regular gasoline into a diesel engine, my visit was extended. About an hour short of my destination, and immediately after filling the gas tank, the car sputtered and leaped forward for about a half a mile before it came to a sudden stop with the display lights flashing on the dash. My sister-in-law called for roadside assistance—the car towed to a nearby dealership. Several hours later, Paul found me at nightfall wandering alongside a country road 50 minutes from his house. The rental car remained at a dealership for repair. Coincidently, that Monday was a government holiday, so the repair time went from three days to five days. In the meantime, I had no choice but to relax my plans and settle into Paul’s world.
This mishap turned out to be a delightful stay filled with wonderful food, wine, conversation and daily visits to town to buy fresh bread and vegetables. His enclave included a house, studio and conservatory—built of sandstone walls, rough-hewn wood beams and ceramic roof tiles—offered a stark contrast to the buildings I live in. The tower that he built on the south side of the house for his father, George Rhoads, an American artist, became our watchtower to view sunsets. High above on the tower, Paul stated empathically that this place is exactly “the middle of nowhere.” I often thought about being nowhere, but his insistence provoked a different sense of where I might be. As though I might say “I am the middle of no one.”
On the third day of my extended visit, Paul offered to paint my portrait. The technique he described to me came from Kurzen’s early teachings. Mid-morning, Paul walked across his courtyard from his house to his studio, stepped over litters of kittens, and entered through the large glass doors and pulled back the red draperies on the windows of the north wall. He pinned a sheet of paper onto a board, selected the paints and brushes and began the portrait. At this very moment, I asked if I might also do a video of him painting my portrait, and thus this portrait of a portrait is born.
Paul explained to me the art of the Kurzen portrait. Paul painted hundreds of these over his career in the spirit of Kurzen’s teaching. This is not a long, drawn-out sitting. More a spontaneous and free form of capturing the person’s likeness and being. I did not know what to expect. I would be the subject, which is odd for me. I’ve always been the seer not the seen. He assured me sitting would take only 20 minutes so I agreed.
I set my iPhone on a tripod and only later in playback did I see the early brushstrokes of the painting, which appeared almost as a child’s finger painting. As minutes passed, I witnessed the virtuosity of Paul’s talent and marveled at how it resembled me. In a way much different than a photograph. From a distance, the likeness startled me. Upon closer examination, bold brushstrokes of colors appeared that made up the features of my face and the shape of my clothing. Bold, gestural and remarkably abstract close-up and more representational from a distance.
I reflected on how the face resembled my father, almost more than me. An extended jaw, pursed lips, and the distant look of my father in deep thought after a tedious day’s work. Paul explained to me the challenge of capturing one expression over time where the face held many expressions. Mine seemed to capture a smile hidden beneath a more serious look. Paul settled on a single expression which I know from the thousands of videos I have taken of people, that there is an infinite number of expressions that make up a personality. Deciding the fixed expression is the task of a good portrait artist.
Many ideas swirled around in my imagination. What images of my identity do I hold in my head? Is it fixed or more a fleeting moment of recognition when I see something that resembles me? How could I ever know what I really looked like to others? Or to myself? I stared at this picture in the third person for several minutes trying to reconcile my self-image with the briskly painted portrait. “Who is this fellow, really? What feelings do his eyes convey? Somewhere between the distant stare and a subdued smile, how did he want to be remembered? Smart? Solitary? Likable? Humorous? Steadfast? Serious? Solemn? Kind? Youthful?” The image still wet on paper, seems to change – not in reality but in how I am straining to imagine what it is telling me about myself. In disbelief, I wondered, can this really be me? What does likeness or resemblance mean? How is our own self-image embedded in our brains?
After the paint dries, I roll the paper up, put it in a tube and pack it away in my suitcase to carry back to America. Once home, I unroll the painting, glance briefly at the portrait and I smile quietly at the likeness of it to me and the memory of it being painted. Months later, the portrait is in my flat files. I still have hundreds of pieces from the Kurzen collection in storage. Now, I’ve added one piece from Paul’s World.
The more I look at it, the more something seems strange about my likeness. In Paul painting me to resemble my characteristic features, does the portrait reveal a part of me that I might not know?