09/15/2026
One canvas. Sixteen faces.
"Sixteen Lives in the Wind" 2016
At first, I noticed his wild hair. Then, almost immediately, I caught sight of my future painting: the freedom of a multi-racial spirit blowing in the wind. It would be a breeze, I thought to myself.
It took almost a year — conceptualizing and working across three continents, morphing dozens of models — to find the real personality of the portrait. The mysterious character on my canvas lived through sixteen distinctly different identities before I let the most inhibited one rest.
Repainting, searching for the right emotion, letting one face go after another, became the most grueling and relentless creative endeavor I had ever encountered. Yet there was no other way to capture the movement of silence and the inner light I was seeking. No other way to find the true living spirit within one man.
Sixteen Lives in the Wind — acrylic on canvas.
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