Tess

Tess is a beautiful, funny, thoughtful and intelligent eleven-year old. She is the youngest of my three daughters. She inspires me every day with her playfulness, curiosity and emerging love of all things related to art. She makes me want to be an artist. I love the contrasting patterns of the henna tattoo, Tess’ freckles, the leaves and the dappled light. Tess is dressed as a queen and is playing chess in the garden. We both loved the quirky composition. To me it captures Tess as a playful girl, dressing up and being creative. It also shows her as an intelligent and thoughtful girl, playing chess. In addition, it nods to her creative side, with the henna on her hand. I wanted to capture the concentration on her face, a result of her patiently holding the pose for me, but also interpretable as a concentrated consideration of the next move…