Welcome to Coffee with Strangers #1! For the duration of this post, I’m going to refer to the subject as “Jake”, just because I’m still trying to figure out confidentiality ethics when I’m painting a portrait of someone I don’t know well. This painting is part of a larger series I’ve started that has resulted…

Here is my process from start to finish. I made this painting as a response to Sadie Bennings “Locating Centers” (http://ci13.cmoa.org/artists/sadie-benning) at the Carnegie International exhibit. I wanted to decentralize the portrait by creating ripple effects that had centers off canvas. I also wanted the ripple effect to happen below the content of the painting,…

A picture of the intersection of Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, taken from the window of the library. The bus and the street are lifting from the painting three dimensionally, which is somewhat hard to pick up due to the the photograph not being able to pick that up

This is what I’m working on today. I hope to have it all the way done by next week- should be manageable unless this painting catches me by surprise. Paintings, I find, can sneak up and attack when you least suspect it.