Music: Lady Gaga “Bad Romance” The pose for this painting was inspired by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s “La Grande Baigneuse.” It was never my intention to paint in the master’s style but is only an homage and recognition of his talent and influence. Ingres might be my favorite painter. There might be painters of equal talent, ability, and mastership of craft (such as Vermeer); but none are his superior. And his influence on Degas and then Picasso, Braque and the cubists cannot be underestimated. Ingres would break the boundaries and constraints of human anatomy and proportion to suit his own aesthetic compositional needs. Ingres might have been the arch enemy of some modern artists who immediately followed in his footsteps; but his daring in composition paved the way for their more modern approaches to function and form. On a more personal level, the woman who posed for this work was someone I met at work. We began a relationship and I was quite smitten with her. One night she invited me to a friend’s birthday at a bar. It was only once I arrived that I discovered this “friend” was actually her boyfriend and that I was the person she was cheating with. I still love this painting even though the person portrayed turned out to be less honorable than I had originally perceived.

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#figure #portrait #retrato #painting #ladygaga