Artist Spotlight: Wes Hempel

Camping on Vermeer. Tell us more on this.
I was initially drawn to the Vermeer interior because of the extraordinary quality of light. But I’m also playing around with the contemporary painter George Deem’s campy idea of How to Paint a Vermeer (title of a book of his paintings). So the piece may be humorous on various levels. And yet I think there’s a poignancy lurking underneath that has to do with the portrait on the wall (the same person as a boy?) and the way the young man presents himself now.