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Perhaps a part of the problem - and it's worth a discussion on this forum - is the tendency for artists to try and emulate the photograph, amplified by the use of reference photos as opposed to working from life. This is particularly in evidence with commissioned work, as much if not more the fault of the client as the artist. It's not even a necessarily conscious choice as it is the tacit acceptance of an ingrained archetype. (One need only look at the majority of the presidential portraits in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.) The result is a subject whose only thought is to hold still, and possibly project an air of power and gavitas that usually comes off as forced.
Mike, I share your leaning toward painted portraits, for much the same reasons as you, though I don't dismiss photoraphed portraits (I think Cecil Beaton, Annie Liebowitz, and Diane Arbus among many, many others). Both are valued and valuable art forms (in an aesthetic while not necessarily monetary sense). But in the opening decades of the 21st century we should perhaps be moving away from portraiture that too often attempts to compete with photography and instead stands by itself as a genuinely personal work of art in its own right that goes beyond presumably objective external likeness and is a reflection of the artist's response to the subject. There are precedents: Lucian Frued, Elaine de Kooning, Andrew Wyeth, Philip Pearlstein, Alice Neel, Robert Henri, Egon Schiele come immediately to mind. Undoubtedly this is more a matter of educating portraiture clients than artists, most of whom would probably embrace a paradigm that celebrates their individuality.
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