All The People

(2019-Current)

All The People is an ongoing project consisting of a collection of paintings I have had commissioned of friends and loved ones in my life. The urgency I have to collect and preserve extends to my people. It would be frowned upon to stick all of my friends in a box or in cataloged binders, so painted representations of them will have to do.

As a kid I recall watching Saturday afternoon movies on local TV. Several times a year the fairgrounds would host an art expo and they would be advertised during the commercial breaks.
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday at the Fairgrounds! Art Expo! Starving Artists Prices!
The camera would pan through row upon row of paintings of nature scenes, barns, and deer gently drinking out of a creek. Calming nondescript imagery for the home or office. Functional. Think Bob Ross.

This same type of functional style can be found in painted portraits that frequent public spaces commemorating people of note. The founder of the bank. The benefactor of the art museum. The school’s favorite teacher. These become, especially over time, the representative vision of the individuals that garner not just a photograph, but a painting of them.

I take lots of photos of people in my life. Again, collecting. I have thousands of photos of certain people and that was the genesis of this project. What would the representative photo look like? That question came to mind when I received a photo from Emily Hanlon; a selfie in front of a mirror at a costume shop wearing a reindeer mascot head. I found the image striking, hilarious, odd, and beautiful. Very Emily. Maybe the most Emily. Painting worthy even. From there the most painting worthy photo of Leeta came to mind. And then Mike. I began mentally compiling a list of representative people in my life and over time, collaborating with them to create the quintessential portrait of them… the quintessential portrait of my vision of them. I mostly see Nancy in the warmer months working in the garden next to her driveway. Dave shooting the breeze with me at a local dive bar. Dodd and I’s bond of our childhoods staying up late watching midnight movies. Sometimes the collaboration veers topical: COVID interrupting Mande’s life. Or timely. When Elizabeth and I met to discuss her painting she has recently had a dream where she was seduced by Bigfoot.

Starving Artists Group Art Expo Commercial (1980s).

Polaroids of painted portraits (2005).

As the project has progressed, it’s shifted to be more than representations of the characters in my life to a document of my life and the changes that come with time. Some subjects in my collection have shifted from being very close friends of mine to more acquaintances or even no longer friends at all. Some subjects I’m closer to. Some subjects have died. The documentation that lays within the project illuminates that each painting is not a singular piece, but a collective one.