The subject of this portrait shares my fascination for Egon Schiele’s gouache paintings.  There is something about the work of this early twentieth century artist from Austria that is at once watery and defined, grotesque and sublime.  It’s a something that I am reminded of when working on my portrait bags. 

Because the bag must be functional when it leaves my studio, my process for applying paint must be very different from my usual wall-hanging painting process.  I must avoid layering the paint too thickly on the barely primed canvas of the bag in order to keep the bag’s canvas flexible—which is essential to its stuff-ability!  This restriction on heavy layering means that these bags have a more gouache or watercolor feel than my other paintings.

Megh is one of my dearest friends from college and someone I tend to paint and re-paint, much like Christine.