When I met Kate, I was impressed by her energy, it seemed to me like a genuinely nice and kind person. We got along immediately, as if we have known each other for a long time. She shared her life story with me, how she had healed her wounds and strengthened her relationship with her mother. We’re both an only child, so we could also feel identified with that. Her tattoos are full of stories, but the one that captured my attention the most was the one with the lotus flowers that she has on the back part of her arm, when I asked her for it’s meaning she told me that it came from the capacity they have to arise from deep waters, as a metaphor of the resilience we can have as humans. Making her portrait was a beautiful experience. It made me feel peaceful.

Laurence exudes a distinct air of contemplation that I aimed to encapsulate. Lost in introspection, I sought to capture the philosophical essence that he frequently infuses into his artwork.

I chose to paint artist, Ellen Starr Lyon as though she was looking into a mirror, and immediately transported to the past...seeing herself as a distant, royal relative from the 1500's. Her hair is different...her clothing from a bygone era...wearing a stylized "crown". Though the figure could be a great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the face she sees is her own.

It is so amazing to connect with fellow artists and this project takes it a step further. This is my most recent collaboration with Steven DaLuz. We met for the first time, in person, at the The Portrait Society conference in Washington DC. We had the opportunity to attend lectures and events together but also share a bus ride to the National Portrait Gallery that allowed for more serious conversation. On the last day we made time to take reference photos for our portraits of each other. My portrait of Steven speaks to me of that thoughtful exchange.

This painting, titled "Aliyah," was painted immediately following a recent trip to Paris, where I had the opportunity to study the works of great artists. I created this painting in response to a prompt for artists painting artists, drawing inspiration from the works of Jules Bastien-Lepage and Paul Cezanne. During my multiple visits to the Musee d'Orsay, I studied Haymaking by Bastien-Lepage and Madame Cezanne by Cezanne, which influenced my painting. My goal was to capture the youthful expression found in the central figure in Haymaking while also incorporating the warm and cool colors used by Cezanne in Madame Cezanne to articulate the form and space of the figure. These subtle yet meaningful influences worked in harmony with my unique voice as an artist.

Eva is primarily a figurative artist whose work features realistic subjects in somewhat magical moments. She was born in Poland and moved to the United States at the age of thirteen. Assimilating to a life in a new country as a teenager was challenging, but creating art was something that helped to make the process easier. The recognition her art received during high school, contributed to forming her identity as an artist and set the direction for further pursuit. She went on to earn a Bachelor's degree in Art and a Master's degree in Art Education from Northern Illinois University. At the school she learned the basics of a wide variety of art media, which is evident in the work that followed. Instead of teaching art she decided to try other art related professions, spending 6 years at a commercial art studio, followed by 10 years working as a tattoo artist. Through the many media she has tried, portraiture and female figure has been a consistent focus. Today she continues to work on portrait commissions and other figurative work primarily in oil. She works from a home studio located in the Chicago suburbs.

When painting a portrait of the talented artist Eva Evangelista, my aim was to showcase the various contradictions that exist within us all - the serious and the playful, the stillness and the motion, the intense and the inviting, the classical and the contemporary. Despite being separated by distance, Eva and I worked collaboratively through texts and image-sharing to ensure that the pose and lighting were just right. Although my painting style was representational, I deliberately incorporated disrupted edges and distressed elements to emphasize that no one can truly know or fully represent reality through paint.

In his gaze, there is a calm self-assurance that is so welcome in the sometimes chaotic, deadline-driven world of Museum Exhibit Design. Tom is renowned for his creative, problem-solving visual ideas in support of wide-ranging topics: from historic objects in the tomb of Tutankhamun to the ethereal pursuit of light by such artists as Monet; from abstract scientific ideas such as the Human Genome, to fascinating human storytelling for Real Pirates. His background in painting and illustration prepared him to persuasively communicate his vision for these collaborative productions. Here he sips tea and basks in bright light in his studio, hinting at both his innate optimism and the reflected brilliance he enjoys in service of big ideas.

In getting to know Lorena, I observed her incredible work ethic, creativity, and passion she has for her art. I wanted to capture instead the quiet incubation stage of her creative process by showing her in a state of daydreaming and self-reflection from which her creativity stems.