Portraiture is incredibly intimate. A few years back, my art teacher shared an anecdote in class. Using her husband as a model, she practiced a new viewing technique. Trying to better understand the physicality of portraiture, she gazed at him, slowly caressing every facial feature. She memorized each detail, from moles on his chin to his sloping brow bone. After around fifteen minutes of studying his face, she finally began sketching. She advised us to do the same with those we love for practice. Rather than picking up the technique, I recall saying it seemed utterly romantic. My teacher laughed and said, “All portraits are.”
It’s hard not to see the intimacy breathing out of Aja Washington ’25’s work. Each portrait glows with intention, illuminating her brightly colored studio. Her work shows years of careful attention to emotions, artmaking, and hue. When I asked about her experience, she confirmed my suspicion: “I’ve been making art for a long time. I was always drawing in elementary school. I had a billion sketchbooks, but I didn’t get serious about art until freshman year of high school.”
Aja continued, “I really liked it, so I took an art class every year in high school. I love to create, in school and outside of school, and I was always really attracted to representing people and developing my practice. In my senior year, I knew I was gonna study art in some capacity. Since Swarthmore doesn’t have an art minor, I planned to double major in psychology and art, and I’ve stuck with my majors for all four years.”
Interested in what art courses Aja took at Swarthmore, I asked how she felt her experience impacted Contemporary Art Practice, her current class (and a mandatory double-credit seminar for all art majors). She revealed that she spent last semester studying at the University of Glasgow: “I was in the printmaking and painting program, and it was different from Swat. The class schedule was a lecture series for half the semester, and the rest was just self-directed studio time, except there was no designated schedule.”
She added, “So you created whenever and produced however much, whenever you wanted, basically. On one hand, I created what I wanted and really enjoyed choosing what I wanted to make. On the other hand, the lack of schedule really was difficult for me, because I need to have a schedule and a structure, or else I’m just not productive.”
With full rein to create whatever she wanted, Aja chose portraiture. “I really loved it. I loved making portraits. Many of my portraits were of ‘me’ because ‘I’ was my most readily available subject. It was a very interesting experience because I never have looked at my face so much before. It was a little strange. And I was like, wow, that’s really how my nose looks, and it always looks like this. This is how my eyes look, and it wasn’t in a negative way, just that I was able to neutrally assess my face.”
Self-portraiture allows the artist a certain amount of critical distance to her body in a way that most of us usually don’t experience otherwise. You form a dialogue with yourself, not as the viewer but as the viewed. It feels simultaneously personal and impersonal. While Aja doesn’t necessarily do as much self-portraiture anymore, she experiences that personal intimacy through her choice of subject: family.
She said, “I enjoy creating people, and my portraits are mostly of my immediate family. I like to depict my little brother, just because he’s such a theatrical and expressive person. I love capturing people, drawing their expressions, and capturing their bodily movements. I want to represent people as they are.”
Given Aja’s closeness to her subjects, I was curious about what particular aspect of personality she conveys in her artwork. How does Aja want her audience to interact with her artwork? “I want people to look at my paintings and see my emotions,” she responded.
She continued, “They won’t get the full scope of the emotion, because they’re not inside my brain. But, still I want them to see the intimacy of my family life. I’m focused on creating work pertaining to my family and the connection I have to my family across time. I want to share a story of Black joy specifically through my subjects. That’s how I hope it comes across, especially through my use of color and expression.”
Joy radiates from Aja’s work. Her portraits are fluid, expressive, and beaming. She frames her lens to make their faces feel physically close. Aja shares that intimacy with us, letting her viewers sense that connection to her family. “I love watching creative people create work because there’s always a touch of intimacy,” she added.
“Art allows you to put your own touch on the canvas in a way that is so uniquely human. Maybe that’s my psychology side speaking, because I love looking at the human mind and seeing how we care about things. But, I know there’s something unique and beautiful about the human touch and the way people represent feelings.”
Since Aja feels that sense of identity in her work, I wondered if she found feedback and critique difficult. Conceding that it can be tough, she shared, “Getting feedback is the worst part of art class. It’s good because you need that criticism to grow, but it’s so hard listening to people critique something that is quite personal to me.”
Aja continued, “As the years have gone by, I accept that this is what they see, this is their interpretation of the art, and that’s what art is. You have to leave your art up to viewer interpretation, regardless of how you feel about it. Take that, of course, with a grain of salt, but consider how you create now and if you want it to impact your art moving forward.”
Simultaneously, she emphasized the importance of making art, even if you’re hesitant. Aja shared that many of her friends hesitate to create because they think their work will never be good enough. She disagrees and encourages them to take that first step, even if they don’t think they have the skill. I couldn’t think of a better way to finish the article if I tried to.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try.”
