I decided to post a section of an unfinished painting I did when I was in high school. The entire painting is in acrylic on a 36" square canvas.

At the time I was enamored with Norman Rockwell and his series of collections of different peoples' faces. Meanwhile the art I saw in my mother's women's magazines were 70's collage-style painted illustrations, so I decided to combine the two. I could never make the whole composition work and eventually gave up on it as a finished project. But I still really like the little girl's face. I think it's the reason I hung on to this for so long.

I worked from a photograph of her I'd found in TV guide or something. The other woman to the left in the hat is from a Vermeer print I'd gotten at the National Gallery, and the woman at the bottom is from an illustration in a women's magazine. It was at a point when I was figuring out how to paint, how to use acrylics, which were pretty basic back then, how to work with composition, and the difference between rendering a photograph and coming up with your own idea by copying both fine art and illustration. I was trying it all and all in one painting : )

As I look at it now I see myself at 16 or 17 trying to understand art, while being proud of what I could at least render back then. It was and still is I think a delicate dance between growing and trying new things, while also having enough small successes to boost you forward so you can start the cycle all over again.