Newtown Artist Dan Duffy Is Painting His Way…

From The Beltway To The Emerald Isle

By John Voket

Whether it’s a marathon session pumping out portraits of Washington insiders or leisurely crafting more than two dozen nude sketches of some of Ireland’s most popular celebrities, Newtown artist Dan Duffy takes it all in stride. The globe-trotting 46-year-old who keeps an intimate attic studio tucked just off Main Street and a sprawling industrial loft in downtown Bridgeport, has just completed a somewhat notorious project for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The agency’s current Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, commissioned Mr Duffy to create his official portrait in oil, along with portraits of the former four secretaries, Mel Martinez, Andrew Cuomo, Henry Cisneros and Jack Kemp. The project, which fetched a widely-publicized $100,000 paycheck for the easygoing Newtowner, was more of a trophy than compensation considering he had to develop each finished 32- by 44-inch work, and frame them, and deliver them in just over two months.

They will adorn HUD’s newly renovated auditorium and conference center in the heart of our nation’s capital, during an unveiling ceremony that has yet to be scheduled because of apparent construction delays. While Mr Duffy admits that project was daunting, with 18-hour days and frequent trips between his studios, he sounded no worse for wear chatting with The Newtown Bee one recent afternoon.

The lifelong artist moved to Newtown from New York City about a decade ago. He grew up in Summit, N.J., in a big family whose parents were motivated to get all their children started on a hobby at a really young age.

 For the young Mr Duffy, it was drawing.

“My teachers recognized when I was really young that I was really good at it,” Mr Duffy said of his natural abilities. By the age of 10 he was going to private art classes after school, and was easel-to-easel studying alongside adult art students at 13.

“I was lucky enough to get a position working privately with Carroll Jones through high school,” Mr Duffy recalled. “I became his apprentice through college, and took over his gallery at age 19 when he decided to graduate to fine art from portrait work.”

By the time he turned 20, Mr Duffy had attained the enviable status working and making a living as a full-time artist in New York.

“Sure, I waited tables and other odd things in college, but this has supported me. There have been big ups and downs, but it has always sustained us,” he said.

Over the past quarter-century, he has also sustained himself and his family taking work where ever and when ever it was available, amassing illustrator credits on more than 100 children’s books and “a lot of biography book covers.”

These days, however, portrait work is Mr Duffy’s bread and butter. He has the distinction of being Yale Law School’s most commissioned painter in the institution’s 125-year history, and has either sat with or reproduced oil on canvass likenesses of hundreds of academia’s and the business world’s movers and shakers.

Launching “Skin Deep”

Finally, as he turns his attention to 2008, Mr Duffy may be affording himself the rare vanity project with his upcoming exhibit, “Skin Deep,” which is scheduled to premier at Dublin’s prestigious Cross Gallery in April. The series of sketches encompasses a virtual “Who’s Who” of Ireland’s female celebrity circles, who are incidentally all over the age of 40.

“Initially when I presented this idea of painting nude portraits of women over 40 it was considered somewhat controversial,” Mr Duffy said. “Yes, asking women no matter their age to remove their clothing and pose for a male painter ran the risk of being perceived by an audience and those who were asked to pose with suspicion. But the goal aside from art for art’s sake has been to raise awareness of the destructive power of a youth driven or generationally-ignorant beauty ideal.”

He describes the connection he has made with each subject as an almost incomprehensibly amazing artistic opportunity.

“After all, I wasn’t asking these women to expose themselves, but to reveal themselves in the most vulnerable way. To be able to get to a point where they feel genuine and not defensive, it was such a privilege to be there and let that moment occur,” Mr Duffy said.

“I was a complete stranger to almost all these women, but each one of us no matter what profession we choose, we are creative beings. When you sit down as a maker, especially as a painter, my interpretation is like writing a story on each one.”

He said the various sittings with the likes of actress and playwright Elizabeth Moynihan, songstress Sinead O’Connor, or former Miss Ireland, Siobhan McClafferty, has afforded the local artist “a sincere opportunity to reflect on something authentic.”

“That whole part of this process has been most significant,” he added. “I hope in the end it excites women about growing older — embrace it, don’t fear it. As we age we leave things behind, but there is so much more to experience, we are not lesser people, we are much much more.”

To that end, Mr Duffy already has plans to bring the “Skin Deep” concept home, organizing a similar series of famed American women of a certain age. He also hopes the concept will spawn a book deal.

Mr Duffy sees the eventual publication tying together reproductions of his best works, with input from a worldwide authorship of leading women, all focused on the beautiful aspects of aging gracefully, or not so gracefully.

To date, one of his favorite celebrity subjects has been Nell McCafferty, perhaps Ireland’s most famed feminist. Ms McCafferty has also enjoyed celebrity as a playwright, author, and activist.

“Certainly Nell was a pioneer in Irish feminism, and I believe her efforts were among the first that helped afford women the right to not live as victims,” Mr Duffy said. “She will be my main painting for the show – and she is one of the largest pieces in the show. It’s my fantasy that one of the largest galleries in Ireland will go for this painting.”

Bringing It Stateside

Once he comes stateside, it’s nearly certain that his first completed sketch for “Skin Deep” will be fellow Newtowner E.J. Welden, who he said is in her early 70s and teaches snowboarding among other active pursuits.

“E.J. is someone I would describe as a real hot ticket,” Mr Duffy said. “I like this image so much that it may be included in the Irish show.”

The reality of aging and the truth of beauty, Mr Duffy said, has been discovered and rediscovered again and again through this experience.

“That experience is substantially broader if we simply take the time to look and listen before we accept some prepackaged definition,” he said..

So to reach an audience, to initiate a dialogue that he believes must resound, the artist chose to explore the myths and misconceptions of aging. 

“As we age and after women have lived, perhaps gained and or lost weight, survived an illness or death in their family, carried and given birth to one or more children, have grandchildren or even great grandchildren, their bodies evolve,” he observed. “The depth of their life experience is reflected in their eyes, their faces, hands, breasts, stomach and  thighs.”

To compare, he said, is to miss the relevance of, or minimize these unique and rich lives. 

“To dismiss the aesthetic beauty of a realized existence, the triumphs and losses seen in not just a face but the shoulder or back of an 80-year-old woman is significant. Life can be long and much of life happens after the evolution is well under way.”

Does this mean the local artist arrogantly subscribes to painting portraits of women over 40 to stimulate enough consideration that we will all eagerly welcome the aging process? 

“No,” he answered emphatically. “It’s clear there is a mourning period prior to coming to an often fragile level of acceptance. It is both the fully evolved life and this chapter, the genuine vulnerability, that most of us feel prior that I wish to recognize in this exhibition of portrait paintings and drawings.”