Sean may have been the easiest and certainly one of the most fun people to paint. For me, at least, any time someone gives me something more than their simple face, I usually have so much more to work with. Sean gave me all kinds of points of reference on his face — his beard, his mustache, his glasses, and his hat. It didn’t hurt that he was interesting to talk to as well. Early on in this project, I kinda ran up against a built-in contradiction to the composition of a pizza box. The boxes are square and faces are oval. Faces don’t usually belong in square frames. And when they do, what do you do with all that empty background? Early on, I guess I just thought that it would be interesting to color it for the moment. And then I used that solid color solution for many of the paintings that followed.