Gold LeafKatrina

Katrina is shot from below, which makes her taller than you whether you like it or not.

taller than you, like it or not.

The white top is the only cold thing in the picture. Everything around it runs warm. What is nearly visible underneath it stays nearly visible, and that is the whole photograph.

The gold is real gold leaf, not paint. There is no gold in oil paint, and whatever you build with it is a pile of decisions pretending to be something it cannot be. I do not ask it to pretend any more.

The weeks went into her face and got nowhere. She is looking away and there are sunglasses in between, and together they put her out of reach, close to arrogant. I kept trying to take that out of her and I never managed it. So it stopped with the refusal still in it.

What do you do with it?

Inspired by a photograph of Katrina Moreno. 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.