I recently saw this portrait of former Democratic Senator (and very angry George W. Bush supporter) Zell Miller, when perusing google image for a photo to accompany a post I was writing about him. This fine oil painting is from a Georgia-based portrait artist named Thomas V. Nash, whose website I quickly perused, sending me down the rabbit hole. Did I ever even publish my Zell Miller bit? Who knows.
Mr. Nash has painted many other anglo “Men”: politicians like Newt Gingrich, and CEOs, doctors and Episcopal priests. He also does creepy portraits of children and dead people. There is a particularly eerie portrait of a dead child named Jeffrey, using a dummy dressed up like the child, in his “state-of-the-art portrait painting studio” in Roswell, Georgia. Nash’s portraits are unintentionally surreal, his subjects unintentionally bizarre. He’s clearly a technically competent artist, if not a master of detail. His oil paintings lack nuance, but that is because they meant to confer a sense of literal power concealed in innocuousness and benevolence which border on sinister and ironic. Even the children bear a sort of sinister quality twinned in innocence. The women are regal but undeniably sleazy. Look for yourself.
Mr. Jack Guynn, Former President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Collection of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, GA
Olivia
Private Collection
Lyn
Private Collection
68 x 32 inches
Okay, now we all know who this is. This painting really takes the cake. Newt’s balloon head is represented as 10 times too small and his bloated torso too slight. The artist captured the manically glib glint in his eye and the chiclet-teethed grin just right, but without the girth and the giant head, it lacks accuracy. The artist paid to attention to OTHER details, such as the left eyebrow ever-so slightly arched in cocky condescension, why not get the proportions right? Even with an artist as fine as Nash, Newt is one subject whose malevolence simply can not be cloaked. It is captured in the way in which there seems to be a sinister light emanating from upraised, extended left hand of the subject, as if summoning the powers of satan. And the porcine fingers of the right hand clutch a mysterious document – what the holy hell is it?? The Washington Monument juts out from the Mall in the background in phallic authority. If you look closely – grab a magnifying glass like I did – you can see one tiny tourist through the scroll of the iron gate – a black hood on its metaphorical head – pausing to aim a camera directly at the viewer, as if some terrible, silent scream hovered in the background.
Reverend Harry H. Pritchett, Jr.
Collection of All Saints Episcopal Church
Atlanta, Georgia
Teardrop is clearly the Lord’s spectacle style of choice.
Ali
Private Collection
Claudia
Private Collection
41 x 28 inches
Claudia- a circa 1984 grande dame, a Stepfordian combination of Krystal Carrington and Princess Daisy. Not sure what the pearl thing she is holding, a very long pinky raised in haughtiness, but then again, I don’t want to know.
Jane
Private Collection
36 x 30 inches
It must be my own sense of history, of debauchery, and of fear that makes me feel thoroughly creeped out by this portrait of Jane, as if she were a car or catalog model, posing in the Angeles National Forest, captured in time, just seconds from being murdered by her portraitist.
Mr. Alex Smith, Esq., Senior Partner
Collection of Smith, Gambrell, and Associates
Atlanta, Georgia
38 x 30 inches
For the love of God, don’t look at his hands.