KIEFERART FINE ART UP CLOSE

"White Lie"
Oil on canvas, 11" x 14"

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This was fun. I had done a commission of this boy's sister for the family. Back in the day before I had a camera, I used to give discounts on commissions if they would go through their shoebox of family photos and loan me one or two for reference to do paintings for myself. Sometimes ordinary candid photos make really good paintings.

This photo showed the whole family at the dinner table. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about it until I did a double take on the boy. I think he was actually bringing some food to his mouth, but cropping it this way gave the impression of a sort of 'guilty', nail-biting gesture. There was a devilishness to his expression coupled with the positioning of that hand, so I isolated him from the rest of the images in that photo and painted it out of context.

My palette was more limited in those days, using mostly cools in this piece. While painting in the background, I accidentally dipped into my mineral spirits instead of my medium and painted over the window panes behind him with it. You can't really see it very well in this pic of the painting, but it created a very interesting blotchy effect that I use purposely now in certain instances. "Happy little accidents" like that account for about 20% of my evolution as a painter.