Father’s day, son’s honor

Stanley Rayfield does not consider himself a great artist.

But the proof is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

There by itself, commanding attention on a wall of its own in a second-floor gallery, is "Dad."

The oil painting was chosen as the second-place winner in the 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. It will remain on display through August.

"What we saw, what the judges saw, was the work of an extremely talented painter," said Brandon Fortune, the National Portrait Gallery's curator for painting and sculpture and part of the team that judged a field of 3,300 entries in the competition. "He seems to be very, very at home with the materials. He has real gifts of painting and composition."

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When Rayfield heard about the competition, the second of its kind since the museum reopened after a major renovation in 2006, he said he immediately knew that he would paint his father.

"You paint what you know."

An only child in a family with few ties in the area, Rayfield said he has always been close to his parents, particularly his father.

He knows his father as caring and compassionate but also sick. He wanted to create a work that would portray his father as strong but not shy away from his weakness. The oil painting depicts the elder Rayfield in a hospital room, his robe undone to show off the scar of heart surgery.

"You see something different every time you look at it," said Alex Bostic, an associate professor of communication arts at Virginia Commonwealth University who taught Rayfield for three years. "You can't just look at a piece of art once.

"You see the hospital bed, you see the clock without any numbers on it, and it makes you ask questions.

"You see the guy is struggling but you just know he's going to make it."

Rayfield said his father wasn't thrilled when he saw the painting.

"He didn't hold back," said Rayfield. "But he came around. He got to see what I think of him."

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"One of the surprises with Stanley was that he's such a young man," said Fortune.

That the 22-year-old, who graduated from VCU in May, was able to create a work that could catch the attention of judges, then keep them coming back to explore the nuances, is not a surprise, said Bostic. "That's just pure talent."

"He has an exceptional level of accomplishment in a very short period of time," Bostic said. "You see a lot of maturity in the painting, a lot of hard work."

The thing that sets Rayfield apart, said Bostic, is a willingness to get better.

"He does the work," Bostic said. "Most students aren't willing to do that work. They just settle. He keeps pushing himself."

Sitting in a North Richmond coffee shop, Rayfield smiled when asked about his work ethic.

Thumbing through a cardboard portfolio, he showed off a progression of sketches, each better than the one before it. Then he began dissecting a painting of a buffalo soldier, pointing out tiny details he said could be improved upon.

"I never feel like it's good enough," he said. "I'm never totally satisfied. I always see room for improvement."

Growing up, he was not a prodigy.

He was a trumpet player, more than anything, trying to follow in his father's footsteps.

"I just drew to keep me calm in class," Rayfield said. "When I was younger, everybody was better. When I was in the third grade, there was a kid who was insanely good. When I was in the eighth grade, someone was better. I never felt that I was that good."

He did get a good break, though. The high school for his neighborhood was Henrico High, home of the county's specialty program for the arts. There, he was exposed to some of the area's best high school art teachers.

"We worked our butts off," he said. "At other schools, you might get art once a week. There, it was every day."

He moved from there to VCU's arts program, where he studied drawing and painting under Bostic and the other professors who have made the art school one of the nation's best.

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For all the formal training, Rayfield gives Kings Dominion credit, too, for his development as an artist.

He spent four summers there doing caricatures.

"It was great experience," he said. "I got to draw all day."

All he wanted to do was draw people, he said, and for eight hours a day, he was paid to do it.

The work also taught him an important lesson about exposing his creative side to a critical world.

"It toughens up your skin," he said. "People coming to an amusement park aren't always the nicest. They're not going to spend their money on something that's not good, and they'll tell you. They can get a stuffed animal instead."

He said he thought about quitting a time or two -- public rejection can be tough -- but logistics always won out.

"It's like, 'Man, my mom's not going to be here to pick me up for six hours. I might as well keep drawing.'"

He learned how to draw people fast. He was supposed to knock out the drawings in three to five minutes.

"If it took you 10 minutes, it was way too long," he said.

He finally settled into a rhythm and learned to enjoy the job.

"There were some people there who had to be there to earn money," he said. "I was there because I wanted to be there."

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Rayfield is back home for now, trying to figure out the business of being an artist.

He invested his $7,500 prize in supplies and equipment. He's looking for commissions and trying to learn how to market his success in the portrait competition.

"I'm doing everything in my power to be a portrait artist," he said.

The challenge, Bostic said, is making the potential pay off.

"You always hear about people who had talent," Bostic said. "Now it's a question of what he does with it. It's up to him. The door is open."

"He will have great success," Fortune said of Rayfield. "He's not only talented -- he has a big heart."

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or .