In starting my sustained investigation I knew I wanted to work with conceptual portraiture and decided on exploring the question of how can the surroundings in a portrait help define the person? To add on to that question I also would ask people questions about their favorite "blank" to help guide the portrait: their favorite color, their favorite piece of clothing, the years in their life that were most meaningful to them (the meaning unknown to me). With this favorite "thing" I was able to make the portrait a better reflection of who they are. I purposefully left the favorite thing unknown to the audience to make the painting more intimate.

 

At first my investigation worked to hone my skills in portraiture and began with simple backgrounds helping evoke emotions of the people in them. Over time I shifted to more complex backgrounds and other elements, working with the cut-out years to help ground portraits with more substance. After using years in the minimalist backgrounds and their arrangement to evoke the personalities of those in the portraits I shifted to more abstract elements such as returning to the background color yet with added complexity, as seen in my final piece.