I summoned up my nerve—with encouragement from artist buddy Tim Wells—to make a call before a recent trip to LA. Well, actually I didn’t make the call, though I picked up the phone in several attempts to. I’d summoned just enough nerve to send an email.
Tim had suggested that my portrait-artist-hero, Don Bachardy, might be open to having a fellow artist sit for a portrait, and with Mr. Bachardy working his way into his 80s, it seemed best to grab the moment.
Gentleman that he is, Mr. Bachardy replied to my email with a phone call (which went to voice mail, of course) telling me, in a surprisingly distinctive and accented (Australian+British) voice, that he’d be delighted to have me sit.
So plans were made to spend a Friday afternoon at the studio next to his home on a scenic Didionesque ridge in Santa Monica.
I was a bit anxious to be painted by an artist that had done portraits of a who’s-who of Hollywood (from Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn to Jane Fonda, Angelina Jolie, Ed Norton, Jack Nicholson, and on and on) and the arts (Hockney, Stravinsky, Mapplethorpe, Aldous Huxley, Ed Ruscha, and on and on) in addition to endless drawings and paintings of his partner, the writer Chistopher Isherwood.
And I was anxious also at the thought of sitting still, an activity I don’t feel particularly well built for.
So I plotted out the day with Stan’s help, and with uncharacteristic attention to time management.
I’d start the day with a thorough workout to enable a long sit, then a light lunch. I’d consult Waze to determine drive time for a Lyft driver. And I’d arrive 15 minutes early instead of my standard (and—I’ve been admonished—infuriating) 10-20 minutes late.
I arrived at Mr. Bachardy’s front gate 15 minutes early, chatted with Stan for the first 10 of those, and then unlatched the gate and began walking down the garden staircase into the canyon that the house and studio straddle. As I approached the huge picture window at the front of the house, I heard the artist’s unmistakable voice boom to a hair-raising decibel level, angrily and colorfully cursing someone out. I’d been wondering if he had an assistant of some kind, being older and clearly open to letting strangers into his home. How, I wondered, would he manage to shift gears from intense anger to greet me, his model, at the door?
He answered the door with “What’s the point of setting a time to meet when people don’t come at that time?” He was alone in the house. The irritation (fury?) was with me! I’d arrived 4 minutes early. “I have things to get ready in the studio, and now I’m thrown off,” he went on.
I managed to shake it off quickly—it seemed kind of absurd, and couldn’t have been personal. It turned out to be a bit of a gift, actually, because he left me alone in the house while he went to prepare the studio. The two large rooms in front of the house were chock full of art hung salon-style up and down every wall. Great stuff, including some of his best work and work from other artist friends (a few Hockneys!) I was in heaven.
By the time he came to get me, the anger had evaporated.
Don escorted me through the lower floor of his study, lined with framed work organized around huge flat files, and led me upstairs to a seat in a large chair facing a wall of windows that looked down the hillside and across the canyon. As he poured liquid acrylics and mixed them on a plastic cafeteria tray, he and I chatted about the building of this studio over the garage, about painting, about punctuality (which he chuckled about now). More than once he mentioned his “friend Chris,” which struck me as endearingly polite and unassuming, since almost anyone would know that Chris was the well known author Christopher Isherwood, and also know that Don and Chris had been a famously out couple in 50s and 60s Hollywood and art circles.
The conversation gave way, as it often does in sittings, to silence. Staring out the window, I could make out in my periphery Don’s sinewy brushstrokes, pauses where he gathered his gaze followed by large calligraphic gestures that felt pushed from his core. And I sensed odd movements on his face. Like other artists I’ve known (maybe I’m one of them), Don seems to lose control of what his face is doing when he’s in the flow of painting. My mouth, I think, forms words silently. Don’s opens to reveal a disturbingly darting tongue, and produces unnerving mouthy sounds.
But I gradually got lost in the view of palm-studded hilltops and in my thoughts, which drifted into a reverie on painting; on what a full, long lifetime of painting would be like; on what we keep as we age and what we lose; on losing loved ones, beauty, and health, but perhaps not one’s art…? I watched the wind whip foliage across the canyon and I began to mentally draw the scene, feeling my way through trees and crevices and…
And, to my horror, I realized I was teetering on the soft edge of sleep.
I tried to keep my eyes wide and my gaze fixed on a particular mid-century single-story home, and to think of something that would produce the kind of anxiety that would make my adrenal glands squirt me awake. The vision of falling sideways off my chair seemed to do the job well enough.
I was pretty sure that I’d been sitting for well over 20 minutes–that’s the longest period of time I let my models sit before I offer them a break. Would Don offer me one? Soon? I wanted to be a perfect model and was resistant to asking. As time went on, though, I ached from sitting and felt the fog of being cottoned in nothing but my own thoughts.
Finally, Don’s voice punctured the quiet, saying, “well, either this is the beginning of the end of things, or this is a breakthrough painting!” He talked about having 2 different approaches he uses for portraits, working in one or the other, but today found himself going back and forth between the two, clearly in a struggle to fix things that felt like they weren’t gelling. “It’s not you,” he said, “you’ve been a perfect model, very still and contemplative.” And sleepy.
“I hate to ask, but could we try another fifteen minutes? I’ll know right away if it’s working better,” he asked. I checked the time. I’d been sitting for two and a half hours!
“Sure,” I said, “after a quick break.”
One last romp downstairs, savoring the portraits that lined the 2-story studio building, gorgeous paintings of Isherwood, more actors, and that controversial one of Governor Jerry Brown.
Don Barchardy portrait of William Salit
The second sitting was shorter, maybe 30 minutes or so, with Don facing me directly. I kept my eyes fixed on his.
And after, he shared the work. Neither compared well to my favorite of his paintings, but I hadn’t expected them to. Both were fascinating. The second (shown here), done quickly after the laboring of the first, was the better of the two, and I liked it quite a bit. I noted the elongation of the head, and was impressed by the economy of brushstrokes used to convey the hair.
We chatted a bit more, did selfies, and he asked if I could come back to sit again in the next few days. Sadly, I couldn’t. But I’m looking forward to my next trip to LA…