process

The top painting is the finished state of the painting on the bottom. Originally I began a painting of The Endowment: Columbia has portraits all around campus of benefactors, faculty, presidents - but not portraits of what matters so much, what needs protection like a child from the dangers of common life, The Endowment. In the process of painting The Endowment, I played with all kinds of oblique symbolism (symbolism can't be obvious or it's just fatuous). I wanted to distill the essence of The Endowment: it's more than money; it's dreams, projections of happiness, projections of success, a sense of belonging, of being in control. The Endowment sits throned in the heavens, who can but sing.
Instead though, the painting became Hercules at the crossroads of Vice and Virtue. It is in many ways a better painting. Certainly it is more focused, pared down to the relationship between a man and two women: which is virtue? which is vice? And there's some nice painting in there.