1
ABOUT THE PIECE
Wren & Co. had moved into a building with a beautiful double-height lobby and filled it with stock photographs of skylines that were not theirs. Twenty-two people worked upstairs and not one of them appeared anywhere in the space.
We painted all twenty-two of them. Portraits on board at three-quarter scale, hung as a single grid that runs the length of the lobby wall. The goal was simple: make the first thing a visitor sees the actual people they came to meet.
2
THE TRICKY PART
Twenty-two portraits in three weeks means eleven sittings a week, and none of these people had time to sit.
We set up in a meeting room and worked in forty-minute blocks, painting from life and using photographic reference for the finishing passes. Keeping a consistent hand across twenty-two heads is the real challenge — the last portrait has to look like it was painted the same week as the first, even when your eye has drifted five hundred hours in between.
3
HOW IT LANDED
The lobby stopped looking like a waiting area and started looking like a workplace with people in it. New staff get painted at the end of their first month.
We delivered twenty-two portraits on board, a hanging system that takes additions without rehanging the grid, and a standing arrangement to paint new arrivals twice a year. Wren & Co. have since commissioned a larger piece for their meeting room.
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