Portraiture: Looking Through the Eyes of a Painter

Portraiture: Looking Through the Eyes of a Painter

Qualitative research includes a variety of well-known methodologies, including phenomenology, case study, ethnography, grounded theory, and narrative research. One less-known and underused qualitative research method is Essentialist Portraiture. An earlier methodology, Portraiture, was developed by Lawrence-Lightfoot. Essentialist portraiture was created and introduced to qualitative researchers by Klaus Witz. As the name might suggest, portrait methodology is a qualitative study in which a researcher observes the object and describes the essence of the object in detail as a painter draws a portrait. Portraiture methodology has characteristics of case study, ethnography, phenomenology, narrative inquiry, and art-based research simultaneously. In this study, from the perspective of art-based research, we attempted to understand the process of how a painter grasped and expressed an object's essence and developed its portrait. The processes an artist uses when drawing portraits are investigated. A portrait is studied in detail using the artist's work notes, records of their life, environments he was exposed to, and the background information of why the painting was being done. The artist grasped, understood, and expressed the essence of the object using his perspectives. Once a thorough understanding of the way a painter creates portraits is attained, qualitative researchers may also apply this artist/painter's perspective to their work when conducting research. Essentialist Portraiture can give a researcher a deeper understanding of the object of their research.