It is never my intention to draw historical or famous personalities. I find ‘ordinary’ everyday people to be just as fascinating as any ‘known’ personality. However, every once in a while I indulge my curiosity and see if I can tune into historical characters just to see what my intuitive interpretation of them is. The above two images are my interpretation of Genghis Khan and his wife Borte, inspired by the fabulous film ‘Mongol’ which I happened across one night a couple of years ago while channel-surfing. I was lucky enough to catch it on T.V. again a couple of nights ago. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it. It’s beautifully made. Of course my depictions differ greatly from the film’s version of the two characters.

I’ll finish these portraits someday, even though my intention when I set out to do one of my intuitive/spirit portraits is to capture the essence of the personality that I’m drawing. That to me is more important than rendering a photographic interpretation of them. Sometimes the lack of detail, or polish is what adds to the overall mood of the composition.

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“Your [painted] faces represent…not…people you might meet now on the street, but portraits of the residents of the mind. The residents of the mind are very real. In a certain fashion, they are your parents more than your parents were [are], and when you express their realities, they are also expressing yours. All time is simultaneous. Only the illusion of time on each of your parts keeps you from greeting each other. To some extent, when you paint such portraits you are forming psychic bridges between yourself and those other selves: Your own identity as yourself grows.

“Only in a manner of speaking, there are certain ‘power selves’, or personalities; parts of your greater identity who utilised fairly extra-ordinary amounts of energy in very constructive ways. That energy is also a part of your personality – and as you paint such images you will undoubtedly feel some considerable bursts of ambition, and even exuberance.”

(A Seth Book: The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, p.167, Jane Roberts, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1995)