When I start a portrait, I don’t have a concrete plan. I don’t ponder in advance what I want to depict in my portrait, I don’t have a vision of how it shall look. Whoever I paint, whether it is someone familiar, a stranger or myself, I always have to start anew, have to forget what I already think to know. As soon as my sitter has made him or herself comfortable, I start to choose and mix my colours. While I rummage in my repertoire of paint tubes, I listen which colours feel right in relation to the person before me. 

 

What is important while painting is that the painting is aligning with what I feel and see. As this process unfolds, I hope not to stop at the person’s physical appearance; the inner state and ongoings play a role too. I want to look at where the human before me is internally at the moment. My portraits do not claim to reflect a “complete” picture of a person, nor do they represent how I perceive that person in general. I do aim to depict various levels of a person, but only what I am honestly able to see while I paint. Therefore, I preferably complete a portrait in one go. However, sometimes I finish a portrait and feel like I didn’t quite find the right way of expressing what I could sense in a person, that there is a quality that I didn’t capture. Then I like to invite the person again, sometimes even stretching it out into a portrait series, as I did with my father Peter Wagner. 

 

In all this I am also reflecting on another aspect of portraiture, which I find hardest to find words for. I do see my portraits as something very personal, and it is very much about the individual in a specific moment. However, sometimes I do get the fleeting notion of something timeless and precious resting there in each person, untouched by all changes and individual configurations. Here I like to bring up Rembrandt as an example, who made a lasting imprint on my own approach to portraiture, as he was able to capture more than just the individual; looking at his paintings I get the feeling that there is something like a light shining through the depicted person. The experience is concrete, but subtle and words won’t do it justice. While I am unable to sketch it out theoretically, exploring and reflecting this subtle dimension is an important aspect of my approach to painting.1

 

 

1 My approach to portraiture is greatly influenced by Rohini Ralby, and many of her ideas which have impacted me can be found in her article “An Integrative Approach To Composition” (2022).