As a young boy growing up in Ripley, Tennessee, about 60 miles northeast of Memphis, Jamie McMahan didn’t so much as meet an art teacher. School in Ripley in the 1950s meant reading, writing, and arithmetic. But his mother was a talented artist who enjoyed drawing horses, bringing equine beauty to life in two-dimensional form. That was enough to inspire McMahan, who seized quiet moments of the day — or even not-so-quiet moments in the classroom — for the chance to draw his own images.
Horses and cowboys came first, then classmates or a roommate’s girlfriend. (The latter earned McMahan his first commission — three dollars — as a college sophomore.) Today, Jamie McMahan counts a U.S. Supreme Court Justice among his subjects. The life of a nationally renowned portrait artist, it turns out, can start in a rural place like Ripley.
“All of my peers, those of us who do this for a living, are the same in one regard,” says the 74-year-old McMahan from his home studio in Cordova, the room filled with an artist’s preferred northern light. “We drew all the time [as children]. Everything is an optical illusion. You think something looks a certain way, until you draw it. Then you find out it really doesn’t look that way. The way it appears. That’s a lesson being taught by the better teachers. You paint things the way they look, not the way they are. It sounds strange. You paint with lights and darks, you stand back, and that’s what you see. Beginners will fall into a trap of drawing an eye the way it’s structured, but that’s not the way it looks.”
When he wasn’t sketching as a youth, McMahan and his younger brother Larry were playing sports. (He also has two older sisters.) Football, baseball, track, and McMahan’s calling as he grew to 6’9”, basketball. “We didn’t have any neighbors,” says McMahan, “so our only entertainment was to play with each other. Larry was a terrific athlete, not as tall as me, but heavier. He could run like a deer.” McMahan was somewhat of an oddity on the gridiron: a tall, lean offensive tackle. The bruising he took in shoulder pads proved to be good conditioning for a college basketball career at what was then called Memphis State University.
“We didn’t play a good brand of basketball [in Ripley],” says McMahan. “Football was the main deal there, as it is most places in the South. We had two really good ends, but we were weak at tackle. I didn’t care; I just wanted to play. It toughened me up.
“Making the transition to Memphis State basketball — and not having a firm grip on the fundamentals — I had so far to catch up. It was physically rough. Roughest bunch of guys I’d ever seen. Basketball’s supposed to be a non-contact sport. No. They were bigger, faster. And mean.” As a senior in 1964-65, McMahan averaged 11.3 points and 9.0 rebounds for a Tiger team that played in the brand-new Mid-South Coliseum and finished 10-14.
A math major at MSU, McMahan continued to draw when he could, but with no formal training. Upon graduating, he took a job with a rising company called IBM, selling a variety of machines that operated with the new computers. But after seven years, single and with a yearning to explore, McMahan quit that job and traveled the globe, spending time as far away as New Zealand and Australia. Ironically, McMahan took a job down under with IBM to help fund the trip.
Looking back on that globetrotting venture, McMahan recalls a visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and the impact of seeing Rembrandt’s portraiture up close. “His work is not just painting, but sculpture too,” says McMahan. “The way he would pile paint on; it has textures, ridges, and contours. The fire started.”
McMahan returned to the Mid-South after two years, a thirty-something artist in salesman’s clothing. (He confesses to becoming homesick for two things: Southern football and hamburgers.) While taking a job with Data Communications, he remained determined to find a way with his oils and brush.
“I painted signs and murals for people’s houses,” he says. “I painted a hunting scene — backwards — on the inside of a glass case. It was difficult, but I wouldn’t say no to anybody, because I didn’t have any money.”
An early break came in 1977 when Buddy Lazar — at one time an owner of the ABA’s Memphis Tams — commissioned McMahan to paint his four children (for the healthy sum of $1,000). “He was a hard-nosed guy,” reflects McMahan. “When someone asks if you’re any good, you tell them ‘Yes.’ It turned out pretty good. That was an ego boost; anything that builds confidence is important.” To this day, McMahan insists children are the hardest subjects to paint, as their faces don’t feature the contours of older subjects, blurring that light/dark distinction.
In the early Eighties, McMahan discovered what he calls his “bible,” a book by John Howard Sanden called Successful Portrait Painting. (Sanden painted the official portrait of President George W. Bush for the White House.) McMahan left his job long enough to attend a workshop in New England under the direction of Daniel Greene, his first exposure to formal training in representational art. “Most of the people attending were professional portrait artists,” says McMahan. “It was like opening a window, like magic. Damn! This is what I want to do.”
A year later, McMahan attended another workshop, this time under Ray Kinstler — one of the top portrait artists in the world — in Maine. The master asked the student if McMahan had ever considered portraiture as a career. “That’s when I cut the cord, in 1989,” says McMahan. “I didn’t have a single customer or prospect. But I was single, didn’t have anyone depending on me. Friends would help, giving me commissions to help get me going.”
McMahan moved to St. Simons Island in Georgia for three years, largely to re-establish his own identity. “People knew me mainly as an athlete around here,” he says. “People would ask me how I’m doing and I’d tell them I’m an artist. ‘No, really, Jamie. What are you doing?’ I had to convince myself that I was an artist.”
A pilgrimage to Santa Fe further inspired McMahan as work remained scarce. “But the only market [Santa Fe] didn’t support was portrait art,” says McMahan. A visit there with Bettina Steinke, one of the country’s foremost muralists and also a portrait artist, emboldened McMahan. “I never got to study with her,” he says. “She was so guarded, because all the artists were trying to get to her.” He returned to Memphis, rented a house not far from the university, and resumed painting.
McMahan’s career gained traction as he began receiving commissions from the University of Memphis (Dr. Tom Carpenter, president of the school during the 1980s, was his first subject; more recently another president, Dr. Shirley Raines) and judges (Harry Wellford was the first of dozens McMahan has painted). Other portrait subjects included author Alex Haley and former Tennessee governor Ned McWherter. Volume expanded McMahan’s “brand” as it were, to the point where he thrived in an artistic niche considered anachronistic by many.
“For most of the twentieth century,” notes McMahan, “representational art, as opposed to modern or expressionism, was frowned upon. Everything was about Jackson Pollock and all that came out of the ‘isms,’ Cubism, Dadaism, and all that. It was snobbish, for one thing, not to include drawing. If you’re going to be [involved] in art, you have to be able to draw. Designers, sculptors . . . they have to be able to draw.
“But it’s come back over the last 25 or 30 years. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is again earning his stature in representational art.”
It’s one thing to build a portfolio as a painter of judges, and quite another to capture a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Last December, Yale Law School inquired about McMahan’s interest in painting Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (She graduated from the school in 1979). There would be a three-round selection process for the artist and, if chosen, McMahan would have less than four months to complete the painting.
With Sotomayor’s blessing, McMahan received the commission. He sent three preparatory studies — all done in a single week — to Sotomayor’s assistant, establishing the “story” that he intended to tell with the composition’s setting. “She didn’t like traditional,” says McMahan. “Didn’t like the Queen Anne chair I had her standing next to. She likes modern art. Even her robe doesn’t have pleats; it’s very streamlined, very modern. And that’s her.” In McMahan’s hands, a human subject only begins the tale. The “extras” — like a modern scale, as seen in the Sotomayor portrait — enhance and deepen the message.
Working from photographs and personal impressions after visiting with his subject — Supreme Court Justices don’t do “sittings” — McMahan breathes life into his colorful oils. “Having done this for years, I know how to interpret a photograph and make it look three-dimensional,” notes McMahan. “That’s an art in itself.”
And what about that moment when a portrait is unveiled? Surely there’s some anxiety about whether or not a subject will like McMahan’s reflection in final form. “The way I see art,” says McMahan, “it’s about giving and receiving. What the artist intends is not always what the viewer infers. That’s the way art should be. It’s like a good book: Everyone’s going to get something different out of it. There’s no absolute truth. It depends on the viewer. If there’s something I don’t like, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.” Sotomayor loved McMahan’s treatment. (“As tough as she is on the bench,” says McMahan, “she’s as warm as she can be.”)
Human beings have turned topainting to relax for centuries. Winston Churchill did so, and few have been required to manage the level of stress he knew. “It’s doing something different from what you’ve done before,” explains McMahan. “He didn’t expect too much from himself, because he didn’t have any training.” When asked if he finds relaxation himself in his chosen trade, McMahan pauses and shakes his head. Laboring, as he sometimes does, to visualize the setting — the “extras” — for a portrait is hardly relaxing. So where does a professional painter release stress?
“There are so many parallels between art and golf,” says McMahan. “The harder you try, the worse you’ll do. You can overdo it. There’s a delicate zone between trying too hard and not trying hard enough. I’ll hit balls; won’t waste the whole day playing golf, but I can clear the cobwebs.”
McMahan has a word (borrowed from Churchill, actually) for aspiring artists of any age: audacity. “You try [painting], knowing full well you could fail,” says McMahan. “But who cares? It’s possible to start without any training, and have fun with it.”
William Faulkner once described his life as a writer as being “driven by demons.” You don’t get the impression any demon has ever set foot in Jamie McMahan’s home studio. But Memphis’ foremost portrait artist confesses to a similar unasked-for devotion to his craft, now that he’s managed to tame it. “It’s what I have to do,” says McMahan. “The payoff is worth it. When [a portrait] starts to come together — and you know when it does, you feel that spark — it’s a good feeling.”
McMahan will sometimes ask a gardener or serviceman working on his property to share impressions of a portrait before it’s completed. He relishes the direct commentary and gains clarity for his finishing touches.
“They’ll point out details I didn’t even notice,” he says. “And almost always, they’ll tell me they used to draw in school, like it’s something from the past. It can’t happen again. I keep saying, ‘You can still do it. Don’t let it die.’ Fear of failure holds us back. Just like golf, you need someone to demonstrate. I talked my lady friend into painting a small piece. She painted a pear on a little canvas, and I couldn’t get over it! She didn’t know what she was doing, but that’s the beauty of art. You don’t have to explain it.”
