THEN Andrew Beautiful

In the fall of 07 i met a man who has come to epitomize what i mean by "Little Bird" Andrew sat down next to me in a bar one night and dominate my thoughts for the next two months. So i would be able to distinguish him in the contacts folder of my phone i labeled him Andrew Beautiful. he was the sort of beautiful that made me catch my breath. and that was a beautiful that was inside and out which he was largely unaware of. it wasn't when he wa acting all hard-core and bad ass that he was at his best it was when he strapped on his giant bike helmet and complained about his flat feet. he was also very encouraging of both the little bird line of though and the indulging of my looking and drawing/painting him. he was in Boston for two months and then flew away. it was then that i realized that the little birds do not like or belong in cages and the impermanence is part of their allure. i also began an awareness of my relation to the models i paint greatly influence the final product. like the drawing class with the nude model that no one likes and at the end there are all this scarey ugly drawing of him/her. my affection plays a role. this semester as i have been collecting various models that i am not personally involved with i find that i still have an affection, softening, a generousity of spirit that comes through in varying degrees. its strange when i find someone i want to draw i start to act all weird and nervous around them. i'm afraid that they are going to realize that i am looking at them a little too long or too often and get the wrong idea. then when i get the am able to take pictures of them the excitment transfers from the actual person to their likeness that i have captured. then its all over for them by the time that i produce a drawing or painting of them. by that time i have taken everything that i am responding to in them and tweeked it and stretched it and transformed them into my ideal version of them. then i move on. if i get a chance to do live drawings of them or in the instance of Andrew develop a relationship with them the drawings evolve to a more nuanced version of my idealized version and the delightful surprise of whop they actually are.