Young Man With Sunflower

The companion to my sister’s portrait, and the harder of the two to paint, because this time I was the sitter. Oil at twelve by sixteen inches, a self-portrait in glasses against a ground split between red on one side and deep navy on the other. A sunflower opens behind my ear and two monarch butterflies lift away from it, lit as though the flower were the only light source in the room. Five stages, and the sunflower did not appear until the third. She got a crown of many flowers. I gave myself one, and let it do the work.