Touchdown Brady, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
92 x 60 in.
A commissioned portrait of a mother and her autistic son. The mother mentioned that her son Brady, had stitches in the back of his head similar to a football. And this painting is also about his arrival, vis a vie the NFL quarterback Tom Brady delivering a pass for a touchdown.
LEFT PANEL
The left panel is about compounds mixing into resolution.
The white panel at the top is the ‘nothingness’, the white light from which all that matter arrives out of.
When I personally met Brady he was laying on the floor getting tended to by his mom while wearing an elephant shirt. I chose to redraw this scene in chlorophyll green with a spray-paint/crayon type manner. Chlorophyll is an element of life. Drawing it in a raw crayon gesture representative of his fresh youth.
The mother is painted in black and white in the lower right hand corner. The reason I chose black and white is because the color or 'full image’ is not yet completely processed. This panel is about process and its clarity of love. There are also colored strokes next to her head and the outline of a masculine form. This is the paternal energy that formed Brady.
The ground of this canvas is also chipped and several layers of paint have been removed. It has, in essence, been worked on and reworked similar to what Brady has experienced in his young life.
The design of this panel was created to be a separate entity yet uniquely flow into the next canvas and chapter of Brady’s life.
RIGHT PANEL
The image enters resolution. His form, still in a slight outline in his lower body, begins to form the light and love she knows as her son. I painted this in a very loose manner with vibrant colors as if to show the bands of light coercing to form this being.
In the lower left hand corner is the blurred out picture of his hand, as if it is reaching for you and you have yet to focus on what he is offering.
There is also a colored energy wave being emitted from the back of his neck. Sometimes our weakness serves as great strength for others. I’m sure this will be the same for Brady.