ART
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Kathleen Carbonara painted her daughter, Eva, and three dogs in this por- Three brothers from Malibu, Calif., posed for this portrait.
trait done at their home in Winnetka, Ill.
Kathleen Carbonara, who grew up in Fort Pierce and now lives in Palm Beach,
poses with a portrait she painted of her neighbor’s daughter.
husband’s clients. She quickly went from a word-of-mouth
business into a highly sought-after artist whose paintings
exceed the boundaries of simple portraiture.
“I have always been interested in faces,” she says. “I paint
very traditional portraits, because you are working for someone
and are there to please them. They have hired me and I
am not going to let my ego get in the way.”
THE PROCESS
She takes hundreds of photographs over two sittings, particularly
helpful with children. She then is able to synthesize
those photographs into portraits that are imbued with the
unique personalities of the subjects.
“Asking a child to sit for hours is out of the question,” she
says. “My mother had an artist draw my brother and sisters
when we were kids and I look very grumpy in my portrait
— because I was grumpy. Kids can’t sit and be themselves.”
Differing from her early days, when she was paid $500 for
a painting, her current portraits command $15,000.
“A lot of work went into improving enough to ask for that
fee, and my pricing is competitive,” she says. Along with
taking local painting classes, she also took a course at the
Portrait Society of America in New York.
The best reward, though, is the reaction she has received
from some of the fathers of her subjects, who have cried
when they see how she has portrayed their children.
“That has happened to me three times — so far,” she says.
Sitting in her Palm Beach home, the couple’s winter residence
for more than 20 years and where they have recently
moved full-time, Carbonara is surrounded by paintings, but
none of them are hers.
“I put my paintings in the powder room,” she says, laughing.
And those paintings aren’t what you’d think would come
from a resident of the posh communities of Palm Beach and
Winnetka. One is a toothless woman grinning. >>