I Stare At People

These two brothers were so simpatico.

My brother and I had a horrible relationship growing up. We fought constantly. We had dirt clod fights (they hurt), grass spur fights, and we broke each other’s things (I stuck my finger through the wings of his radio-controlled airplane). The fights escalated after my dad died to such a level that the neighbors called the police after I chased him down the street with…well, I won’t tell you.

When you see harmony and brotherly love right in front of you, it is as if God chose that opportunity to smack you in the face with the beam in your own eye. Sometimes, we just can’t get over ourselves to get along, can we? Not the case here – these two brothers, five years apart, liked each other! They could chill with each other. The younger one had a deck of “magic cards”, that he was sharing with his brother. At one point, the little one reached over and hugged his brother. The teenager patted his little brother on the head. It was so touching and so real that tears came. I felt a true longing and vacancy. Relationship. What else is there?

As most of you know, I usually do my “guerrilla painting” on the spot in a freehand fashion. I don’t go back in later and pretty things up. But, this particular painting, although started “live”, was completed in the studio. Here’s why:

I have never accepted a commission on my “guerrilla” style, cafe paintings. In fact, I won’t sell them, or give them away, either.

So, when Leslie Langee got a hold of me on Twitter, and asked me to do a commission of her 2 boys, I thought that she was enquiring about my children’s pastel portraiture work (commissioned work from photographs). My agent contacted Leslie, and found out that she wanted a “live” painting at a coffeehouse of her two boys, ages 11 and 16. They worked out all of the details together. The boys would not be told that they were going to be painted. We chose the Spider House. Since the painting was 16×20 instead of my usual 9×12, and the mom wanted to be able to see the faces of both boys, I completed the painting in the studio, with the aid of a photograph.