Painting someone is an act of love. My brush creeps over their skin, the lines of their face, their strands of hair, in awe at how life-like they are.
I paint very few people, over and over again. I lead a parallel existence with these people, in the world of my paintings, hauling them along with me always, keeping them close. I feel driven to use these particular people because I love them, and love is unbearable.
I feel as it I eat them whole, there is a merging of me and them which has nothing to do with portraiture. Once they’ve been consumed, I lurk there behind the image, sated, knowing that I can’t lose them now.
Until it dawns on me that I have captured only air, and and I am forced back into the unending labour, weaving my intricate web. In the end, a painting is just a leftover husk, a byproduct of my endless attempt to have and to hold.