Mimi Torchia Boothby

Category: portrait

  • Through a glass darkly – self portrait #4

    Totally emboldened by my artist friend’s words, I realized that my new model (me) was not going to get upset if I played a little bit with her face and created new people using her bones as my support. Who is that person in the picture? She really is a stranger, but in a funny…

  • Through the looking glass – self portrait #1

    Defining where I am as an artist, I must tell you that I have been frustrated lately with my paintings. A fellow artist suggested that I do self portraits. I easily blew off that suggestion, “sorry, I don’t like standing in the bathroom for hours painting.” And then I realized what I’d done, once again,…

  • Maddalena’s admonishment

    There are always social changes with each new generation. These differences can be great when generations span continents as well. As the grandchild of two sets of Italian grandparents, sometimes this became very apparent to me. Despite their greatest efforts to become Americans they still retained some of their old world ideas, particularly my grandmother…

  • On painting Abraham Lincoln

    I try to draw or paint every single day, it’s a discipline that I think helps me as an artist. I didn’t have a commission to paint Saturday so I went through the Shorpy archive of old photographs and found one of Abraham Lincoln. It was taken the year that he died. Perfect, I thought,…

  • The curve of the hornist’s hand

    To excel at any instrument requires practice and dedication, but there are some other physical qualities that can give you a real advantage with most instruments including: dexterity for the violin family, long fingers for the piano, a good embouchure for all wind instruments, which includes the French Horn. The French horn, however, is unique…