American GirlVeronika

There are two things in this painting that were not in the photograph Veronika published.

one you can find. one you cannot.

One of them you can find if you look properly. The other does not exist in any image of this work, including the one you are looking at now. It is only there if the canvas is in front of you, and once you have seen it the hat and the denim stop meaning what you assumed they meant.

I am not going to say more than that. It took me weeks to arrive at it and about four seconds to give away, so I would rather you had it the first way.

What do you do with it?

Inspired by a photograph of Veronika Rajek. 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.