Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965, Danbury, CT) has received much acclaim since the early 1990’s when she began exhibiting her intimate portraits of artists, musicians, historical figures and friends. Painting both from photos and from life, Peyton has remarked that in her portraits produced from live sittings there is a palpable difference—a tension between artist and sitter that makes it a clear record of an encounter. John Giorno (2008) portrays the eponymous New York poet, a peer and friend of Peyton’s, whose writing was included in the artist’s New Museum survey exhibition catalog, “Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton.” On being painted by Peyton, Giorno mused, “In the people she paints, Elizabeth sees their special qualities as light, their vitality and accomplishments illuminating their bodies, an extra brightness in their form, deities in aggregates of color, gods almost transparent in shimmering light, their nature displayed in translucent radiance.”