Why? Well, I was told once the main reason is because they like us. Wow! Sometimes I have these moments when I'm removed from the scene and as an observer I'm like whoa, a 4 legged animal just walked past, paused and looked at me sitting on the toilet as if to say, "Must be nice. Try doin' that outside naked with just a necklace on." This always results in me cracking up and giving him the 3rd too many treats that day just to remind him, myself? It's not a mistake to see the world as a silly non-sensical place.  I hope one day to react to something with as much pure joy and abandon as he does every time I reach for a treat and announce to the room, "special delivery for Sebastian Hendrix!"

    Sometimes he looks so darn happy it reminds me of when babies laugh and react to stimuli way too big because they haven't seen how over the top kookoo they look yet.

    And if this doesn't resonate with you or your thinking I'm the kookoo one I'll let you in on a secret about me. I used to have a crippling character flaw where I did this one thing WAY too much. I constantly worried about how everybody i encountered viewed and judged me. The way I looked. How I acted. It was people pleasing on a clinical level.

    Then I met Bash and he showed me what it was like to live like nobody's watching. Could I do that? Would it work for me? I begin to wonder what it would  be like to live and react to life from my own perspective. Not through a lens of what I thought others saw and their perspective of my life.. Everything started feeling brand new, awkward but with an exploratory curiosity. I felt fearless somehow. Like when I was young spending summers on Panama City Beach before I had ever even heard of the movie JAWS. 

    I don't share this aha moment of my awakening to impress you but to impress upon you that this is the approac I take with every portrait I am obliged to create. I listen and observe the ways you talk about them or remember the quirky ways they behaved or acted. The subtle nuances in their behavior that make you wonder if a little chihuahua got trapped in a Saint Bernard's body or vice versa. Whatever the case may be I want the portrait to reflect their true nature and how they, given a voice, might would like the world to see them. Of course a couple of your favorite pictures and at least one good head shot is helpful for refence but in order to get an honest rendering an initial meeting or conversation, preferably in person, is really key before we begin.

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