The Boy from Louisiana (carried the moon in his eyes)

(Above) The Boy from Louisiana (carried the moon in his eyes)
A mixed media painting (indian ink, watercolour crayon, poster paint) on paper.
12.5cm x 15cm
July 2010

This painting started as a study after a thumbnail photograph that I happened to find on the Internet of a black boy wearing a check jumper. To me, the boy looked as if he was from Mississippi. In a conversation with Sarah Howgate*, the New York portrait painter Alex Katz talks about how people from different countries, different cities, have a very distinctive and recognisable style or look. To me, the boy in this thumbnail had to be from one of the southern American states. So, he became “The Boy from Louisiana” and then with the blue ground in the painting suggesting a mythical midnight sky, his eyes seemed to echo, or carry, the moon, hence the final title. Titles are indeed great fun. They are not at all necessary but they do provide an opportunity to tell a story (often about how the painting came into being), to offer meanings, and using a periphrasis like this adds a poetry that is evocative of folk tales.


*In conversation with Alex Katz by Sarah Howgate, in Alex Katz Portraits, published the National Portrait Gallery Publications, St Martin’s Place, London, on the occasion of Alex Katz Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, May - Sept, 2010.