Artwork / 2019 / Cynthia

I made eleven portraits for The Future We Need, a book about collective bargaining and how it can be used by more than just labor unions, which features the stories of workers like Cynthia. Others who appear in the book are Allyson, Bettie, Deloris, Heather, Jeff, Kimberly, Lidia, Rubynell, Sanchioni, Sarita, and Smiley.

To paint Cynthia’s portrait, I worked from screenshots taken from a video of her. This is not my normal process for painting portraits, but I have done it now and again, including for this double portrait. For more about painting portraits from other people’s photos or videos, check out this blog post. This video shows the full making of Cynthia’s portrait.