Chicago Historical Society based on partners in crime Leopold and Loeb. Photo Credit Richard Cahan 2004.

The commissioned portrait painting brings with it certain constraints, limitations, or directs one's thinking in a particular way-or at least it does for me... With commissioned portraits, I've always felt a need to adhere to a fairly consistent logical portrayal of the person. In other works, not commissioned portraits, I include the likeness of a specific person within a freer kind of pictorial invention.