"I've heard people say that: 'Oh, you know, the winners always look like the other winners.' Well, I think that they really don't. Because I don't think that people study faces as much as I do," Marcella said. "And I think that these girls are different. They are different in their eyes."
Marcella does not do likenesses of powerful heads of state, jowly millionaires or stern and solemn corporate types. Her subjects are pageant winners - Miss New Jersey, Mrs. New Jersey, Mr. Male America and the victors of the Mother-Daughter contests in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Along with the tiara, the furs, the cash, the glory, each of them also receives as a gift a formal "Portrait by Marcella."
"I charge (the pageant) $1,950, plus tax, plus the frame," said Marcella, who earns the bulk of her living by painting people dressed in sequins and satin.
Her "painting business," as she likes to call it, has given Marcella access to this sparkling world. She will again share personally in the spectacle of the Miss New Jersey pageant tomorrow night when she is called on stage to present last year's winner, Patricia Lynne Bowman, with her portrait.
But Marcella herself is no Danielle Steel of the canvas. The woman who devotes five hours a day to portraying America's ideal of youth and glamour lives modestly in the North Jersey suburb of Cedar Grove, in a cozy split- level filled with soft chairs with crocheted pillows, an upright piano and paintings of her three daughters. Her studio consists of an easel set up in her married daughter's old bedroom.
