I’m thinking about Devon’ Rodriguez’s admirable portrait of his friend the artist John Ahearn.

Devon’s painting is a great place to start a discussion about portrait painting in the 21st century. Now that the capability for portraits exists with every smartphone camera, thinking about the special qualities of a painted portrait is timely and relevant. We need to understand what might make a portrait art beyond the ordinary digital selfie.

Why do we like portraits anyway? Portraiture is as old as civilization. Chinese traditions of painted portraits go back at least three thousand years. Pliny the Elder wrote that portrait painting was practiced by Greek men and women 1,900 years ago. Artists have long been hooked on portraits and today we have a better, rational understanding of the psychology behind portraits.

The best scientific explanation for the pleasure we see in a portrait comes from the Leknes Affective Brain lab. Their studies show: “Paying attention to others’ faces and eyes is a cornerstone of human social behavior. The mu-opioid receptor system, central to social reward-processing in primates, mediates the capacity for affiliative reward in humans.” In other words, looking at portraits literally makes our brains feel better (on natural opiates.) If we look at someone’s eyes and face our brain is chemically rewarded, and this reward promotes happy primate social behavior.

And why do artists tend to make so many portraits attractive? It’s no surprise that artists like to paint portraits of pretty young girls. These subjects are the most popular, easily sold, and low-hanging fruit of the portrait world. These portraits leverage our worldwide trans-culturally agreed-upon desirable traits of youth, symmetry, and “averageness of features” to get a feel-good response from the viewer. This simplified biologically driven idea of beauty has dozens of studies supporting how biology and the environment work together to shape our aesthetic values. A preference for regularity and averageness itself is biologically based, being a superficial visual indicator of genetic health. Many great artists have used this hard-wired strategy in works like Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady With An Ermine, Joshua Reynolds The Ladies Waldengrave, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith. All show a biology-favoring aesthetic of averageness working over a span of 400 years. The aesthetic still works today.

But in the 20th century, especially in America and driven by economics, we began to organize culturally around the idea that there was a real difference between an amateur painter and a professional painter. Economically, the amateur is unpaid, while the professional gets a full professional rate of pay. Amateur vs. professional – it’s a split in how we think about health care, auto repair, and every sport. Professionals in activities from baseball to corporate CEOs are now getting paid far more than ever, and it’s because Americans love the idea of rewarding professional competence. We believe there are measurable qualities that separate the amateur from the professional, and likewise in art and even in portraiture.

At the one end of the scale you have amateur artists painting portraits of the people they know. It’s all about portraits of cute babies, Aunt Ginny, and funny Uncle Fred. These amateur paintings are made with a lot of love but are not serious art. And why not? What’s missing in those swell paintings of Ginny and Fred? Why aren’t they serious art like that dumb musty old Mona Lisa?

The term “serious art” has been used to either support or undermine a wide variety of art over the last fifty years. Among the most successful and famous living portrait artists is David Hockney and critics have called his painting un-serious for decades due to his style of intentional simplicity. Proving you can be rich and famous and still not serious, at least according to some critics. There’s not much clarity in the art world about what makes a painted portrait serious, so let’s talk about that. And let’s explain why Devon Rodriguez’s approach to portraiture makes the John Ahearn portrait both professional and serious.

There are three areas worth considering in qualifying a portrait as both professional and serious. The first of these is skill, meaning the artist has spent enough time working with tools and materials that they are fully aware of what paint effects are possible and achievable. Skill is almost entirely a matter of the right kind of hours of proper practice to develop reliable working habits. Skill is not about realism or abstraction, it is simply being in control of the paint and having found an effective personal style of expression.

Secondly, the idea of professionalism. Steven Pressfield’s book THE WAR OF ART (2002) has been waking people up to this potential for years. The summary of what makes a professional artist is this: Professionals have specialized knowledge and possibly academic qualifications. They are committed to developing and improving their abilities. Professionals show up and do the work, they don’t wait for inspiration. They don't make excuses and focus on solutions. If they are challenged, professionals remain calm and businesslike instead of getting angry or upset. Genuine professionals practice good “self-regulation.” This means they stay professional under pressure. Professional artists understand the importance of total visual credibility. The art looks good and they look good. They appear credible as makers. Professional artists don't look like raving lunatics, street bums, or have bad body odor that nauseates collectors. They may dress a little strangely (Dali, Warhol, Bjork) but the clothing is an expression of their outsider personality, not just laziness.