My First Commissioned Portrait(s)

I was asked to do portraits of my studio landlord's three children. This was several firsts for me. I've never been asked to do a commission. I've never done a portrait for money. I've never done three portraits at the same time! However, I felt ready and excited to take on the challenge. I decided to draw on two previous series as a source of inspiration. The first is A Very Brief Period in Time, where I isolated images of people I caught with my camera while traveling through Japan. I picked people that were expressing something about themselves in the briefest of moments, caught unaware, and isolating them from their environment so the focus was on their gesture or story.

The second source of inspiration came from my series, Not Very Sentimental, where I abstracted close-up images of flowers. Flowers are a backdrop for so many different milestones in Life, from celebrations to comfort.

I am super pleased with the end results and especially happy that my client also liked the paintings. It was good to challenge myself and also satisfying to see how past work is constantly influencing my evolution as an artist. It makes me excited to see where the work will take me next. I hope to get more requests like this commission. If anyone is interested in requesting a portrait, let me know. I can give a great deal since everything at this point is still a big experiment!