Throwback Thursday

This painting came from an idea I had in a dream.  Up until that point, I was consistently painting full figures in a large scale format just slightly smaller than life size.  I kept the same compositional format in every painting which included a standing or sitting model in front of a low horizon line on a vertical canvas (see previous post).  I never deviated from this format throughout my entire MFA body of work.  After I graduated, I was limited in how large I could continue to work because I was working without a studio.  I started working much smaller as I had to paint in my basement.  

I was cropping my portraits at this point because of the size constraints, but I was still using that same straight on point of view on vertical canvases.  However, one night I had a dream that I was back in my old studio and it was filled with these much larger than life portraits on horizontal surfaces.  These were very interesting paintings to me, as if I was seeing them in a gallery, but never felt they were something that I would do.  But since it came form my sub-conscious, I realized they were paintings I would do, I just wasn't conscious of it until my dream.

I decided to paint this portrait of my niece, Gina, because I wanted to see what happened when I followed through with my dream paintings.  I didn't want to include it in my body of work at the time, I just wanted to do it for "fun," but ironically, it ended up being the first painting I ever sold.