GirlsKayleigh and Emily

You are not standing where you would have chosen to stand. That is the whole reason this one exists.

you are outnumbered.

Both of them are looking straight out at you, and they are asking for the attention rather than putting up with it. That is what made me start. It is the only canvas in the series with two women in it, which means there are two of them and one of you.

Something shifted over the weeks. They stopped holding anything back and simply opened up, and from there the work was to paint them at full strength instead of making them easier to look at. When that was done, so was I.

What do you do with it?

Inspired by a photograph of Kayleigh Swenson (@vikingbarbie). One of four canvases of Kayleigh. What the painting makes of it is my doing, not hers. Part of Painted Idols.

The photograph this came from was made to be forgotten. This canvas was not. It took weeks, and it will hang on a wall for years.

Ordering takes a minute. Deciding where it goes is the part that takes nerve, because everyone who walks into that room will see it and decide something about you. That is the real decision, and it is yours. The ones who own these stop noticing the reaction after about a month, and never stop noticing the painting. Hang it anyway.

There is one of this canvas and there will never be a second. If you have read this far, you are already picturing the wall.