Tina has been one of my favorite models ever (sorry girls). She is so beautiful and so intense. She is that person who I can share anything with and feel completely safe. No judgements just open heart and open ears. She is also stop traffic beautiful as well as a gifted artist in her own right specializing in glamor photography where she some how manages to tease out the goddess in every women who falls into her viewfinder.
This painting is one of a series of large portraits that culminated in the largest show of my 30+year career at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids Michigan in the winter of 2017-18. I was on a personal quest to re-imagine the feminine in a contemporary culture that is currently witnessing the rise of a new feminist wave of empowered women that are saying “enough is enough. Our time is right now!”