Orange VanRiae

I scrolled past her and went back. It was the sweat.

months in the archive.

At that point I decide nothing. I just save it, and then it sits in the archive until it starts asking for something. This one sat there for months.

Then days at a time, a week of nothing, more days. That is not a technique. It is how long it takes me to look at one image properly. The photograph was built for three seconds of someone's attention. I spent weeks inside it.

At some point it stops. Not because the painting is finished, but because I am. The image has been dealt with, it no longer pulls at me, and I can go on to the next one.

Something in this canvas is faintly vulgar and it never once tips into cheap. I painted her five times and I still cannot find the line it walks.

What do you do with it?

Inspired by a photograph of Riae Suicide (@riae_). One of five canvases of Riae. 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.