Artwork / Archives / Subjective / Brother

I love how Becca’s portrait of my brother shows him in an animated talking moment, much like her portrait of my mother. It’s very much who he is. Then again, so is my portrait of him, which shows him holding a birthday candle and demonstrating the way that fire can travel through smoke to relight a candle. My brother is an expert of trivia.

Over the years, a number of people have had strange reactions to my paintng of Kristan, believing it to be a depiction of drug use. I don’t use drugs so I don’t know what it is that they are seeing in the piece, but I do believe that their response says more about them than about me or my brother, much like the responses I have gotten to this piece.