A NEIGHBOR
PROJECT
In 2019 I built a house on a hill in a town that I love with room enough to paint. It is an incredible space but I was restless and unsettled. The Neighbor Project was a call to my community to help me make sense of my new home and my place in it. My invitation was simple - come and sit on my porch and I’ll paint your portrait. I didn’t know if anyone would show up, but the response was a tidal wave. Hundreds of paintings later, I’m still profoundly comforted each time a friend or stranger sits down before me.
The outline of this project emerged months before at a gallery in Park City, Utah. The gallery had arranged for me to paint a live owl. I can paint endless owls from memory, but this one demanded that I react immediately, competing with the owl’s disinterest in me and longing for the songbirds outside. There was something hypnotically urgent about painting this way. Unlike my earlier paintings which I could linger over and disappear into, painting something alive before me demanded complete attention. As the Neighbor Project took shape, I knew I wanted the structure of short, uniform sittings to balance the energy of having someone new before me.
These paintings are a celebration of the raw, messiness and beauty of being human alongside each other. There is an inclusivity to the project that I love: Everyone is welcome, each person receives a fraction of an hour, I have the same small canvas, the same paints and yet each painting is an unedited result of us and the minutes we had together. Life is both celebrated and suspended. In that time anything can show up: trust, fear, friendship, uncertainty, hope, laughter, tears. Each time I have to decide on the final brush stroke, I have to turn the painting around and watch hundreds of faces respond to their face through my eyes.
The neighbor project emerged from this place; the curiosity of what I could capture with someone sitting before me. How would my painting adjust to these short meetings, to our conversations, to the love, loss and distractions of each person who joins me.
From my porch, I’ve ventured into my town, into other states and other cities. I’ve painted children, volunteers, service providers, and the neighbors they serve. Each venue is a chapter in the story of how we are neighbors to each other. Each person receives the same attention, the same opportunity to be seen. Each sitting is familiar ground, yet each hour new soil is turned over. There is always someone new to see.
PRESS
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