Mario

As one can see, I have been really lax about posting to this blog in the past, oh, year, and I know my traffic has really fallen, but I'm going to try to remedy that, so with the new year, I'm re-dedicating myself to posting more here and on facebook, etc. I've been working on a portrait series since last summer.  If you can believe it, I was planning on finishing this series in the fall, but life happens, and models get busy, and I'm only halfway through now (I've got 9 paintings going at the moment, and I'm almost finished with the fourth one).

Here's my painting of Mario that I'm working on.  I've been sick for the past couple of weeks, so I haven't been working much, but I'll post what I have so far.

I met Mario at MICA where I teach.  He is a recent graduate of the school, where he majored in sculptural forms, and his senior thesis exhibition was an amazing array of flutes that he crafted out of clay and other materials. I just fell in love with his spirit as he showed me and my friend his instruments which all played and sounded as striking and mysterious as they looked.  Mario posed for me over the course of a few days while he was back in Baltimore, even coming one day during Hurricane Sandy! Here's a quick close-up:

Hopefully I'll start feeling better really soon and can finish this portrait up before the new semester starts in a week or two!