Pretty Baby, Another Painting Completed.

"Pretty Baby" is latest of my new group portraits in the soft story telling style of my recent work.

A young mother, while out walking, is showing off her baby to her girlfriend. The friend looks at the hidden baby with an expression of awe and perhaps mixed with other feelings.

While traveling in France during early 2008, I saw these young women near an open air café. I took several photographs from which this painting was derived.

For a while I thought the woman in green was the mother and the woman in black was the friend - and then I saw the wedding ring on the hand of the figure in black.

The most difficult task was to handle the details of the under side of the baby carriage. There was a lot of detail in the original photographs. It was necessary to simplify yet maintain a structural integrity so that it felt sturdy.

In the end, I used the long supporting posts as visual lines to draw the viewer into picture.

The baby is very present in the thoughts of the viewer, but not seen. The mother's face is hidden, but also is present in the tensions of the picture. Only the girlfriend's face is seen in detail and provides the source of energy to the viewer.