Conrad

You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot


This is a painting of my good friend Conrad. He is a singularly fascinating person who I am very fortunate to know. The course of our conversations is totally unpredictable and therefore, a pleasure to engage in. He is a man of many talents, and this includes music. One morning he was singing a new song to me when I saw the way he was sitting on his chair and wanted to paint him, just as he was. A few weeks later we recreated the pose and he sang another song, just before I shot the reference photos.

I envisioned a painting that was "heavy" to the one side...with space and breathing room on the other side. I was pleased when Conrad chose darker clothes as I knew it would create a nice contrast in values on the canvas. As with many of my pieces I wanted simple shapes with room for the eye to move around in and rest, contrasted with areas of detail as well.

It was truly wonderful to be in a creative environment where music and art coexisted like that. Human beings are very strongly visual by nature yet there is something so evocative, so poignant about music. It resonates with me in a similar yet strikingly different way than art. I wanted to try to capture that energy within Conrad, on the canvas.

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." - Alberto Giacometti