Frank Giordano 2006

Nelson Shanks painted Frank Giordano with oil on canvas, capturing a formal portrait of a suited gentleman sitting in a red upholstered chair. The overall feeling is quite traditional, but when you look closely, you can almost feel Shanks experimenting to see how he could use the act of painting to dig into our habits of seeing. He's using thin layers of paint to explore the textures of the face and hands; you can see how the brushstrokes create this almost photographic image. Shanks has painted the hands in incredible detail, capturing the way the light reflects off the gold ring and watch. I wonder if he had to sit for hours while the painting was made? It’s kind of strange, right, this dance between artist and sitter. You can imagine Shanks wanting to get beyond just a likeness, and into something about what this man *means*. Anyway, what the heck do I know?