It starts with a simple question: "Would you be interested in sitting for me?" asks Los Angeles portraitist Don Bachardy quite shyly and unobtrusively. Bachardy, with his white locks of hair, impish smile and piercing blue-gray eyes behind sleek glasses, intensely awaits an answer.
World-renowned for his portraits of film stars, authors, artists and politicians, Bachardy is one of few contemporary artists who has made a living drawing and painting live models he calls "sitters."
Volunteers who visit his studio daily for portraits number in the thousands, and they're mostly not celebrities but friends, casual acquaintances and strangers. He jokingly likens his series of appointments with sitters to "one-night stands." Bachardy has been busy in the last year.
Fifteen of his new paintings will go on exhibit Saturday for the first time at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. In the series, Gloria Stuart, who once played opposite James Cagney and recently starred in "Titanic" as the elder Rose, is the most recognizable celebrity. Other subjects are local artists, musicians, actors and writers.
Bachardy documents life through faces. His quick, broad brushstrokes of acrylic color capture the fleeting light and changing moods of each model. The effect is a raw, uncanny resemblance.
His works are part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Bachardy blends "surgical accuracy with emotive empathy," Times art critic William Wilson wrote in a review.
"If you want a flattering portrait, you're best going to a photographer. With me, everything is information, so every detail is likely to go into the picture," said Bachardy, 67, in his distinct, raspy British accent. "Beauty to me is truth. That's what is endlessly more fascinating. Our faces are a visual record and history of who we are and all that we've experienced. A particular face carries a particular truth about life."
Sunlight and the cool ocean breeze flood his hillside studio at the foot of Santa Monica Canyon. Here, a sitter's simple wooden chair with a well-worn seat pad faces the Pacific in the distance. There's a platform strewn with pillows for reclining. Bachardy paints while standing at a workbench. The two-level studio is crowded with walls of framed portraits.
