“Women are really dumb,” says Kathleen Van Ella. “We have this problem–even with all the growing up we’ve done in the feminist age, women still think ‘I’m ten pounds too fat or ten years too old.’ Women are still too hung up to rejoice in who they are. And that’s what a portrait’s all about.”
Van Ella walks up to a huge, compelling full-length oil in the middle of the wall–a blond woman in black sits on a black chair with an enormous, colorful necklace around her neck. “Now Carole said, ‘I want to be painted.’ She’d had her children done in pastel and really wanted her own portrait done. I realized that was a profound thing for a woman to say. She was in the midst of transitions– she was moving and all–and she felt that a time of transition was a perfect time to have the painting done.”
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Van Ella says she’s been doing everything she can to further portrait painting, which “has the prestige of history” behind it. “The history of fine portraits,” she says, “is the history of art.” Portrait painters up and down the North Shore and all over the metropolitan area have benefited from her efforts. “If I hadn’t been doing this for the last ten years, a lot of paintings wouldn’t have been done.” Van Ella brings samples and does a portrait slide show at women’s groups, before concerts, at country clubs, and at other places where potential clients gather.
Van Ella has arranged commissions for big names in industry, the arts, and politics. She arranged for the first bronze bust of the late Mayor Daley (recently commissioned by Hilton Hotels and just finished). She says portrait paintings and portrait sculptures always involve “good vibes.”
I ask Van Ella about a painting of a funky young guy slumping in a chair in an office. It turns out the portrait is for sale–obviously something that rarely happens. But this one is of an artist’s ex-boyfriend.
Van Ella says that occasionally landscape painters come to her with their portfolios, wanting to get into portrait painting and hoping she will represent them. “Of course,” says Van Ella, “they’re artists. They can do it. But a professional, experienced portrait painter specializes in people, in special kinds of human contact. That strength is utilized in their painting.” Van Ella accepts very few of the people who send her portfolios.
