Portrait at the American Visionary Arts Museum

This portrait is a commissioned piece for a couple recently married at the American Visionary Arts Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore. During my time living in Baltimore, I was quite taken with the AVAM, as a museum of folk art, it offers a delightful collection of work by untrained artists contained within a wonderfully playful architectural package. It was a delight to make the painting with the wonderfully interesting mosaic of the exterior wall of the AVAM as the background. As I painted the composition of tiles, glass, and broken plates, the symbolic nature of mosaics was swimming about in my head--the beautiful and mysterious way that our lives are composed of different experiences, the people that come in and out of our lives. I was also struck by the challenge and the pleasure of capturing a moment in two lives. I am entirely engaged by photographs. It is fascinating to, with the slowness of painting, attempt to illustrate a single moment.