Boy

2018

Portrait of my son. I worked on this on and off for about six years, doing a few nights and then leaving it for months. Somehow in that time I felt the meaning of the piece shifted and changed and it became something maybe more profound to me over that span of time than if I’d pressed on and completed it quickly. I guess seeing him as a teenager when it was completed brought home that loss of innocence.

I like it when I get an interpretation from a viewer that goes beyond anything I might have felt and lets me see a piece in a new light. Below is an amazingly insightful comment left on the socials by @body.love.art

“This is so precious. Nearly heartbreaking somehow, it really moves me. I see the simultaneous softness and fierceness of “boy” in a culture which is confused about how to help him become. Tenderness with an edge of already repressed violence or at least anger. That might be too much but it’s what I see (and we know we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are).

Acrylic on linen.
50cm x 60cm