Kevin as a painting outline

Kevin used to start paintings and then not be able to finish them because it was such a tedious process with his poor eye sight. The "model" (usually one of his friends) oftentimes could not sit long enough or often enough to complete the process. As a result he had many incomplete paintings at various stages of development sitting around his apartment. My favorite was of a faceless young man in a green sweater with the body of an acoustic guitar in his lap and his arm outstretched with unformed fingers wrapping around a nonexistent neck. This Photoshop effect I did on a recent photo of him reminds me of some of those unfinished paintings.

I sat for him twice in our long friendship. The first time was before I left for Europe in 1994. We stayed up all night, me sitting on a barstool and Kevin painting, and we talked and talked and talked...and then we talked some more. He was unable to start on my face before I had to leave for the airport the next morning. It was a painting of a 20-something male with long wavey hair, t-shirt, shorts, sandles, and a backpack with absolutely no nose, eyes, or mouth. He ended up reclaiming that canvas later on for a different painting.

The second and last time I sat for him was just prior to my leaving for Russia in 1998. I sat in a chair with my backpack beside me, hunched over with an open book in my hands and a black prayer rope hanging from my right wrist. The book was that spiritual classic of Russian literature The Way of a Pilgrim. I read it to him out loud as he painted and we made it through the book at least twice in the 14 hours it took to finish the painting (though, in fact, the border where my right arm touches the draped mattress I was leaning against was not finished *in true Kevin fashion*).

I’d like to think , like those paintings, our friendship will continue to develop in some inexplicable way, always growing and never “finished.”