Artwork / 2003 / Hess

Along with being a teacher and a troublemaker, Hess was an inspiration. He looked at my portraits early on and told me to avoid overworking the eyes. He reminded me that we depend on eye contact quite a bit to communicate, and he pointed out that, when viewing a portrait, we tend to focus on the eyes anyway, so I didn’t need to over emphasize them.

Over the years, I’ve found Hess’ advice to be useful. This painting pushes the limit of my under-doing and it also happens to be a painting of mine that Hess rather liked.