Paley 13th Portrait: J.louis

This piece just speaks to the change 13 brings to all kids. Of coarse, she is now entering teen years. There is so much more to look forward to and fear in this new chapter. I’ve been a fan of JLouis for many years now and bought one of his smaller piece a while ago. He was always on my list of artists to do the kids portrait. I contact J. about two years ago to start the conversation. What I love about working with artists, is learning their creative process. For J., time is the key to his works. Time is almost a act of respect to the art form. 

A lot of artists really take amazing pride in preparing for their works. A commission is truly a glimpse of the evolution of a painting. With J. the canvas is where the heart is built into the piece. Several months were required in building and curing the canvas before J.Louis started to build on it. One of the key elements of love about his work is the brush strokes and how raw his canvases appear when they are finished. Since the artwork took several month to make, we had to take her reference shots a little bit earlier than usual.

We shot the photos back in June and J. had them within the next few days. Sometimes it easy to forget that the artist is working on the piece. For this portrait, that was the case. Literally 6 months later, I receive an email with the final photo of the portrait. It was the perfect Christmas gift this year, of a crap pandemic. In person, this painting shines bright. All of the images he shared during the process and afterwards, don’t do it justice. This is certainly a piece of beauty and a shift back a little more twist, like the painting by Andrew Hem.