One last thing on painting Barack

There is a third Obama painting. This is it, just for the record:



It's owned by a couple in New Jersey who live near Bruce Springsteen. That aside, what makes it interesting, among some other things as well, is that it's 2 1/2 feet by three. A small one. This accounts for the difference in the way the comments fit on the surface of the thing. Neither good nor bad, just different.

What makes it additionally interesting, and this is the reason why I'm bringing the whole thing up, is that although the original idea for how I was going about painting portraits was what I call a Jackson Pollock/Chuck Close fusion, there's another work of art that's always stuck in the back of my mind. It's the sculpture of John Kennedy in front of the Kennedy Center in Washington ...



Not my photo, and would it have killed the guy to focus his camera? Anyway, now look at this...



... as it relates to this ...



I think the idea becomes more obvious on the smaller canvases. But that's not to say that it ever goes away.