Paso Arts | The Nasal Passage to Portraiture

BY HELLIE BLYTHE

PASO ARTS

The Nasal Passage to Portraiture

We learned (but weren’t taught) from Sculpture Appreciation 101 that people began their journey on this Earth without noses. In Paleo-nasal-speak, the human nose didn’t appear until long after man had learned to mine marble and mold it to mimic man. Don’t fret: women were chiseled as well.

Humans sprouted noses only when the need arose. Sneezes erupted through two holes during bouts of allergic spasms, which always occurred when pollen was ground for paint making. Incessant sneezing deemed a nose necessity.

Statuary confirms our previous early noselessness. Noses appeared on face simultaneously with man’s discovery of paint, brushes and fabric. Ancient painted portraits with noses do not exist.

Today, the nose is mankind’s outstanding facial feature, despite historic efforts to diminish it. From all angles, the nose dominates the face. Its central location makes an unmasked face recognizable in daylight. Like a magnet, the nose compels portrait painters to immortalize that noble protuberance in paint for posterity.

Painters relish portraying noses; sculptors love rubbing noses. Chins quiver, brows furrow, eyelids droop, and lips pucker. The nose doth pose in stillness, dignity, and haughty grandeur. Without noses, faces become flat and indistinguishable from footballs.

Recently, artists, especially sculptors, favor the nose above all features to incorporate into their works. Most colleagues select models with remarkable, iconic noses. I often pick a nose from my sketchbook which boasts a collection of importantly superior noses.

My Scots friend, Donald, sported a nose of such legendary size and sharpness. It could cleave you clean in two.

We were erroneously taught that ancient statuary noses disappeared in sandstorms, or during waves of visiting barbarians who detested statuary in general and noses in particular. Ergo, the air would have echoed with mobs shouting: “Off With Their Noses!” Yet, sculpted fingers, toes, fig leaves and other appendages survive today. We were told that sculptors were dragged away, mid-nose-sculpt, and fed to lions. So, concerning the nose, our professors blew it.

For millennia, historians have espoused their broken-nosed-sculpture theories without our smelling a rat. We now posit: mankind’s nose didn’t appear on faces until the advent of the full paint kit, just as Adam and Eve didn’t possess belly buttons! Study depictions of them!

Eventually, the Genetic Drift became powerful, and rising from the gene pool, (one could smell its approach) the Nose finally began to develop, expand, and protrude, making painting a face worth the effort.

Circa 1925: Uncle Reginald married a widow whose son was noseless. By voting age, without rhinoplasty, Ray had grown an enormous beezer which was nothing to sneeze at. Finally, I can attest to witnessed proof: Ray’s two holes evolved into a schnoz accommodated to his environment: a family of portrait artists! On Ray’s portrait, darkening with age and fly specks, his nose becomes longer with each passing decade.

The author’s 3D Pistachio Tableaux and portraits of people performing nosedives are displayed at Studios on the Park, Paso Robles. 