JJ in Blue

JJ in Blue

~ 10" x 18", Plaster and Paint

In the spring of 2018, I saw an old friend in San Francisco. I was nearly finished with a MA in Economics, saddled with debt, and considering moving to Seattle to follow a lover. My friend asked me, if I didn't have to consider any financial or loved one's needs, what would I do? where would I go?

I hadn't really considered it much before then, but my instinct was to talk about going to an old atelier in Italy and learning to draw like the old masters. I forgot about this exchange until I had a break up with a different lover earlier in 2023. Another friend asked me what I was going to do—I told her I would go to Italy to study art in the style of the old masters. She told me she was surprised I wanted to make things in such a realist style.

I think there's an incredible beauty in being able to capture a feeling in an image, then try to represent it exactly the way I saw it. I consider it might induce someone else to experience the same feeling I felt when I saw the true subject. There's already an abstraction when you think about the viewer of the sculpture (a proxy for me, the artist) and the image of the model (a proxy for the model).

I made this piece at the Kline Academy of Fine Art, after 10 weeks and two models, this is the first portrait sculpture I did not destroy.