Playing Favourites

Whenever I complete a body of work I am asked which is painting is my favourite. That's always a difficult question. Favourites can fluctuate between paintings that seem to feel effortless in their production to the stories and imagery involved. For example, the portrait on the far left center is one of my aunts and was taken in South America when she was a young woman. She was a happy woman and, being a very shy person from Paraguay, she wasn't in many photographs. There was just something I enjoyed about finding that photograph in the first place, to capturing a woman that touched everyeone she met. Other photographs that I thought would be easy to capture in a painting were not and vice versa. Some I wasn't happy with my rendering until months later. Some photographs were difficult to see, which is such an unfortunate thing about history, and others just had this lilt to their heads or sparkle in their eyes that caught my attention. And, sometimes, the background and the portrait were just a perfect mix, which is something I can't always envision until it happens. My favourite is really the entire collection together...and that doesn't seem to change even when the subject matter is different. There really is a positive energy in the body of work as a whole.