I created this piece in December 2016, using colored pencils on paper.

Like “Portrait #1” (2014) and “Portrait #2” (2015), this portrait features the same individual, my high school girlfriend, and it was given to her as a gift. These portraits had become like a yearly milestone for us; However, this one would be the last. It came to represent the final year of our three-year relationship and turned this open-ended series of portraits into a completed trilogy. This trilogy, viewed as a whole, shows a progression of increasing color and vividness as I gradually discovered the inner world of another person more intimately than I ever had before.

While the previous two portraits were rendered in realistic proportions from a reference photo, this was drawn freehand in an exaggerated pop-art style, with surreal details filling the scene. Compared to the other portraits, it’s a more complex, rich, and imaginative vision of the individual that I had come to know. Many features in this image are symbols or references that carried personal meaning between the two of us. It was a portrait of not only her physical appearance, but also the shared ideas, identities, and experiences she represented to me. It was an image of her as she existed in my mind.