Artist, Alice Neel: I lived in a little town. I did not know anyone that painted or anything else, but I just always wanted to paint.
Narrator: That's Alice Neel, the artist who made this work. Many of Neel’s paintings take the form of portraits.
Alice Neel: Maybe before I could think and before I had gone to art school and all that, I might have been afraid of people. And also, I had a desire to analyze people. I know my mother would get bored with me. She’d say, I don't care why people are as they are, you deal with them as they are. But I was always interested in what made people work. And I was also interested in the fact of what life did to people.
Narrator: Trust was an important part of Neel’s process. She would often invite potential sitters to her home and tell them stories. Here, she has painted her friend and fellow artist, Benny Andrews, and his partner, Mary Ellen.
Alice Neel: He has the Black experience, and he is a certain percentage Black, and she is a photographer. But I thought it was interesting how, although they're together, they're also separate. See that foot coming out? That gave me another, you know, depth into the picture.
When I paint the person themselves, I talk to them for a while. And in that talking, they take their characteristic pose a number of times, and at the same time, you decide what is the essential of them, you know?
I tell people I need at least four poses. Sometimes three, sometimes maybe five, but about two hours each time. Maybe the first time, about two and a half ‘til you get a concept in your mind of what you're going to do.
Archival audio excerpted from Art and Alice Neel [videorecording] / WGTV, University of Georgia Television, undated. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution