[Steven Sweeney]

Since you're already a professionally successful artist with a cultivated and distinctive style, I'm not sure whether you intended here to solicit critiques on this piece. (And you came to the right place!) In any event, I happen to like your painting style, your considered choice of color in areas (the shirt cuff in yellow light, the shadows on the shirt an equally intense purple), and the way in which you keep color and tonal areas unified rather than broken up or overmodeled. The figure's gesture is well captured, very descriptive of the casual-yet-formal approach to the entire piece.

I suspect that much of the response you might elicit from visitors to a "traditional portrait" site might relate to the composition, and specifically your decision to "cut the figure off" in the middle of the forehead. While I find this undoubtedly intentional departure from orthodoxy interesting in a kind of "shock value" sense, I do find it followed up with a sense of something missing. The stated goals of many portrait artists often have to do with revealed character; though there is that in this piece, I have a competing sense of information withheld for some reason not apparent. (I'm reminded of the common PR-photo of balding men, sometimes on book covers, billboards, and websites, in which the top third of their heads is conveniently cropped out of the image space. Before your time, Wayne Dyer's book, "Your Erroneous Zones", had such a cover, a book about getting rid of hang-ups, written by a guy who was then apparently pretty sensitive about his hairline.)

Too, the centering of focus high in the corner of the painting has definite interest. I have a somewhat unorthodox sense of balance in composition and I'm not troubled by your arrangement per se, but my search in the other 3/4 of the piece (a very large, dark rectangle) for "something going on" is largely unproductive. My exposure to Chinese brush painting has given me an appreciation for the compositional value of such areas, but interestingly there is in such works almost always that "something going on" in large areas of little or no detail, because there is some cross-connection, a bird high in plum blossom branches, say, and an insect on the ground far below -- the "empty" space between is actually "full" of the bird's desire for the insect and perhaps the insect's awareness of its fate. So why mention this? Just to suggest the possibility of engaging a storytelling sense by introducing some additional "character" in the painting -- a single rose, say, dangling blossom-down from the man's hand (some color from the petals might be "reflected" in an increased "blush" in the face); or perhaps a small, richly wrapped gift box on the cushion of the couch to the far left, all perhaps suggestive of some intended action or some intentions thwarted.

Since I've gone on at length already, I'll just briefly mention that the man's eyes seem to me at quite significantly different "heights", once you take into account the tilt of his head -- the tilt is notable, yet the eyes lie on a horizontal line. Also -- and this is kind of the optical puzzle of "is it a vase or two faces?" -- I can't quit "seeing" the man's right arm as being extended from his side into air, the hand merely suspended above the couch. The arm "must" be resting on top of the cushion, yet the hand seems to be in front of it, without any obvious turn of the elbow or wrist to explain this. Also, the weight of the arm would, it seems, create some separation between the top of the wrist and the top of the cuff -- right now the hand seems to be levitating about an inch above the cushion. Quite minor points, of course, in an interesting and accomplished, if provocative, piece.

Best wishes,
Steven