In the last year I lived in New York when I was focused on finding an authentic approach to painting the male nude, I hired a young man I’d never worked with before. He was an interesting man, had studied mathematics, wrote poetry, and someone who I could be around.
He came to the studio five times in all. During the first four, I worked on figure studies for a larger painting. When he came for the fifth session, it had been a number of weeks since I’d seen him and he’d changed a lot. He was thinner with a scruff of a beard. His hair was a long, wild tangle, and he had a kind of listless melancholy that clung to him like a scent. He didn’t look able to do figure posing, so I had him sit for a portrait sketch, and made a quick painting.
After an hour, I could tell he wanted to leave. So, I took a few reference photos, paid him, and he left. When I tried to reach him for more sessions a week later, he didn’t respond, and in fact, I never saw him again.
I didn’t use the images for years, but eventually painted three portraits. Each of them turned out to be experiments in style and paint handling. The first one, I called “The Poet”, the second, became “The Mathematician”.
The last painting is not so much a portrait of a man as of a state of mind, reflecting the last impression I had of him, which was clear in the quick sketch. The word that keeps coming back to me is the German word, weltschmerz… in English, world-weariness… a mixture of melancholy, disillusionment, and surrender… and I think in young people, a sense that they don’t matter, that they aren’t seen. I called the painting, “The Age of Innocence”.
His name was Jordan. He was likely one of the thousands of young people who come to New York with hopes and dreams, and are crushed by it.
I think that part of why I painted him was to know that he was seen at least once in his life…
I call the painting, “The Age of Innocence”