From the Las Vegas Review-Journal / June 27, 2005 / By John Przybys

PERSONALIZED ART: Picture Perfect
Artist goes to extremes to ensure his commissioned
portraits have the right look

Jerry Ommert sounds like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein as he ponders the pieces of his new jigsaw puzzle. "I like this pose with the horse head," he says, shuffling a half-dozen black-and-white photographs around on a table. "I can cut it off here and move her arm.
See this picture of her eyes? I'm gonna bring those out. I'm gonna put that head on this pose, then I'm going to move this arm up and get rid of the chin."
It's all more benign than it sounds, though. Ommert makes his living as a portrait painter, and all of that mental cutting-and-pasting is merely a precursor to capturing on canvas a skilled rendition of a client and her horse.
Ommert, 57, is a quiet, amiable guy with a wry sense of humor whose career in art really began when he painted his first oil work at the age of 12. That was in his native Pennsylvania where, after college and a stint in the Air Force, he ran his own sign painting and graphic arts company for several years.
Then, in 1996, Ommert and his wife, Brenda, sold the business and took a three-year sabbatical, traveling throughout Europe and the United States. When it came time to get back to work, the couple moved to Las Vegas and Ommert decided to focus on oil paintings -- and, in particular, portraits -- commissioned by clients.
For Ommert, the creative process usually begins with photos -- many photos, as many as 100 of them -- that capture as many facets of his subject's physical likeness as he can.
Then, Ommert melds in a pencil drawing bits and pieces of several photos, incorporating a smile from one, a background from another, part of a pose from one and part of a pose of another.
Then he shows his proposed design to the client.
"Now some people are much more particular about certain elements, and you get into a little bit of back-and-forth," Ommert says. "But since we both want a good-looking portrait, it can be resolved."
Now, it's time to begin the portrait, which Ommert says usually takes four to six weeks to complete. It's exacting work that requires not just artistic talent but a solid working knowledge of anatomy and even a smattering of psychology.
Consider, for instance, that Ommert usually ends up repainting a subject's eyes 10 to 15 times.
"You know that old thing about how if you stand back from a good oil painting and walk around the room, the eyes follow you? When people view a portrait from a distance of four or five feet, you have to take that into account and you have to get the right amount of crossed eyes (in the painting)," he says.
"I'm not exaggerating. An eighth of an inch would be a gross mistake. You get down to 32nds and 64ths when you get with the colored part and the pupil and just the right amount of cross-eyedness."
Nostrils and lips also are difficult, Ommert says, because "they will determine everything."
Ever notice, for example, that your nostrils flare slightly and your ears move a bit when you smile? Ommert has.
"If you miss all these little eighth- and quarter-inches along the way, you lose the likeness, and that just makes you nuts," says Ommert.
Ommert doesn't show a client a painting until it's finished. And, when it is, how do they react?
Ommert answers with a sheepish smile. Actually, Ommert says, his wife, Brenda, usually handles delivery duties.
The couple has been married for 20 years. They met in a Pennsylvania nightclub. And, no, Brenda says, smiling, "he didn't ask me to pose for him."
One of Ommert's current projects is a portrait Frank Quintana of Henderson commissioned of his wife, Cathy, posing with her horse.
Quintana said he researched prospective artists for about six months, and that he was impressed not only with Ommert's references, but the fact that Ommert gave him references.
"He gave me a good look at what he did," Quintana says, "and most of the other artists wouldn't give me that."
In this age of digital photography, why would anybody commission an oil painting? Because, Quintana answers, "I wanted something that is going to last for a while."
An oil painting "looks more real to me," he says. "It's more of the detail, the shadow, the light that's in there."
The painting will be displayed in a cabin Quintana and his wife are building in Utah -- probably next to a second portrait, of Quintana and one of his horses, which he plans to commission next.
Jean Fattoruso commissioned Ommert to do a painting of her granddaughter, Sydney, then 10 months old and now 4 that hangs in her home.
Why? Because, Fattoruso says, a portrait is "so much richer-looking" than a photo.
Ommert's portraits start at $575 for an animal portrait and about $1,000 for a person's portrait, and Ommert says his clients include everybody from factory workers to, well, people with a good deal of money.
For their money, clients are hiring an artist whose creative temperament is a bit different than other artists'.
Ommert says it took him "a full 10 years to be able to completely lose (his) ego and transfer it to the client.
Even during his career as a commercial painter, he says "I didn't achieve success until I was able to basically put their own interests above my own silly, little, whatever you want to call it."
But that's satisfying, too, Ommert says. "That's what you get into this for."
Many clients' "biggest fear," Ommert says, is: "Is this guy gonna Picasso me, or is he going to do a painting that's going to be flattering and tasteful?"
"I tell them I'm going to make them look like the best day of their lives in the last five years," Ommert says. The goal, he says, is to "make them look their best without changing them. I call it graphic surgery -- just basically a nip and a tuck."
Portrait painting is, if not a lost art, at least an uncommon one.
It may be a sign of the times that, on his proposal form, Ommert promises that a client's painting "will be drawn and painted by hand" and that "no digital, photographic or mechanical devices are employed."
Still, it's a good thing Ommert can have a sense of humor about such more modern approaches to art. When he's told that all of his mad doctor-like moving around of photos is like something a computer program does, Ommert responds with a sort of grimace.
"Don't say that," he jokes, smiling in feigned fear.