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Untitled (Portrait of Tom Jefferson)

This untitled painting portrays the model, Jefferson, standing confidently nude. His body faces forward, with arms crossed, legs straight and slightly spread, and his head is turned casually to the left, with his face in profile, directed toward a light source, possibly a window. David Park captured Jefferson with a minimal impressionist style in nineteen fifty-seven. The thick brush strokes are not at all hidden and in places, blatant, as if it is there to remind the viewer of the process. Using brush strokes that are an inch wide and sometimes several inches long on a relatively small twenty four and a half by eight and a half inch canvas, the painting appears to have been efficiently done in a few dozen brush strokes.

Jefferson appears to be caucasian, represented in beige, tan and brown. He has a long head with a prominent forehead, with a spackle of light brown smeared above his left ear, and the top of his head is cropped out. Dark smudges below his brow suggest his eyes, and a streaky squiggle of dark gray and brown form the shadow of a strong nose and a hint of a mouth. There is a bit of orange on his ear and neck below a minimal chin.

He has broad shoulders with thick arms, and his left arm is crossed over his right. There’s a black patch at his left armpit, and a white highlight between his arm and chest.

A small black splotch marks his belly button on a slim abdomen. A loose leftward brush of black and dark blue creates a tuft of pubic hair above an average sized beige flaccid penis backed by a brown shadow on the thigh.

His legs are thick, the right leg in the light and the left slightly dimmer in shadow. There is a highlight of blue that defines the left sides of his legs and also outlines his left pubic crease.

The background is light gray below his waist, dark blue to the right of his upper body, and in the upper left corner next to his face are four thick brush strokes of beige, tan, brown and gray, stacked horizontally like oblong bricks. There are also two dabs of this same brown, tan and gray to the left of his waist.