Artwork / 2007 / Shawn

Shawn did not commission me to paint her portrait. Her husband did. Often times, a client wishes to surprise someone special with a completed portrait of them. And while many portraitists happily work from the photographs a client provides to paint a portrait, I do not. It isn’t that I don’t love being part of a surprise—I do! It’s that I want to make the best portrait possible, and, in order to do so, I must meet the subject. My work is not about the likeness captured in a person’s features, but in their way of being and moving. To be able to put that down on the canvas, I need to have been in the same room with it first.