Jeremy Hoffeld is among the more gracious artists I know, a man whom I have had the privilege to befriend as a result of sitting for him, not once but thrice, dating back to 2007, when he first drew me. His artistic practice is interestingly divided between the larger, abstract canvases he shows in galleries around the world, and representational portraits, almost quaint by comparison, that prove the best artists are often masters of the rudiments. Last November, I sat for him again, for a video podcast in which he chats up the sitter while drawing him/her in paint from scratch. There’s no determination of completion where this formal figuration is concerned, save for wherever he lands with the composition after some two hours at his studio in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. Something had happened to the video of our session last winter, so he invited me to sit for him again a few months ago; the result is another extraordinary study in verisimilitude. To thank me, he gave me the first portrait we’d done 11 years before, which he’d had thoughtfully framed. I simply adore it, much as I do the artist himself.
