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I'm overwhelmed by all your comments. Thank you so much!
Garth, you really do have a knack of making people float a few feet above the ground. Imagine my painting being compared to a C.W. Peale! Not just any Peale, the very one that I, as a kid, would race to see first when my mother took me to the art museum! It remains one of my favorite paintings, not just because it looks so real, and has an interesting story, and has steps attached to it, but also because the boys look so nice and attractive and friendly, like you want to (and could actually) talk to them.
Bonfim, you mentioned all the things--brushstrokes, lighting, color--that I've been working so hard on for the past few years. I can't tell you how much it means to me that you approve! Sometimes I feel as though I work and work on some aspect of my painting and there is no real progress. So thanks!
Linda, that "modern feel" is an interesting thing. To me, it seems that traditional or academic realism defines portraiture more narrowly than the other "branches" of realism. Not that that's bad or anything. But I've always wanted to paint some kind of modern theme with a traditional feeling. Or maybe it's a traditional theme with a modern feeling? I'm all confused. It's the melding of the two that excites me artistically. Thanks for seeing that, because often I feel that both modernists and traditionalists look at my work and think I've missed the boat somehow.
Lisa, yes, Steve is very friendly and easy to talk to. He probably would say hi in the hardware store. I really appreciate what you said. The idea for the portrait came to me after I realized that most full-length portraits are formal. Since I like to push the envelope a little, I decided to try an informal one. Steve was a perfect subject because he never gets dressed up unless he is forced to. If you tell him "nice casual" he wears his better pair of jeans. Then I imagined how an informal portrait might look, and this composition popped into my head.
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