Selected Portraits
The Work
Justin, Seated
Oil on canvas, 24 × 36 in., 2025
Painted life-size, over two evening sittings.
Gwen
Oil on canvas, 23 × 32 in., 2026
Alla prima.
Captain W. V. H.
Oil on panel, 18 x 22
Preparatory study for a formal portrait.
A. M., Abstracted
Oil on canvas, 16 × 20 in., 2025
painted from life.
Commissioning a Portrait
The Sitting
You come to the studio in Seattle for a sitting of two to three hours. There is coffee, quiet music if you like, and good north light. You sit; you are welcome to talk, or not. The work begins from the first minutes and does not stop.
Andy paints alla prima — wet into wet, directly from life. Nothing is traced or projected. What appears on the canvas is what happened in the room between the two of you, in that light, on that day.
If you have commissioned a study, you take it home that day, still drying. A formal commission continues over the following weeks in the studio, and you return once more before the varnish, to see it finished.
Three Ways to Sit
Commissions
The Study from Life
$750
One sitting · charcoal or oil · alla prima
A head study painted from life in a single sitting. Yours that day, still drying.
The Formal Commission
From $3,500
From life · one to two sittings · oil on linen
Founding Collector pricing, held for the practice’s first three commissions: $3,500 head and shoulders · $6,000 three-quarter · $9,000 full figure.
Standing pricing thereafter: $4,500 · $7,500 · $11,000.
The Legacy Commission
By invitation
The portrait · the film · the study · the record
The formal portrait, a cinematic short film of its making, the framed preparatory study, and archival documentation of the work.
Pricing is honored as published. Founding Collector status is recorded in the practice’s history.
Biography
The Painter
Andy Maier is a painter in Seattle. For two decades he has worked as a director and cinematographer, learning to hold a face in light . He now paints portraits from life in the tradition of the atelier — a studio practice built on daily drawing, master study, and long looking. Every portrait begins with a sitting; nothing is painted from a photograph alone. Each Legacy Commission is documented the way he once documented for others.
Care of the Work
Provenance
Every finished portrait leaves the studio conservation-mounted, and set in a house-built walnut frame. A provenance label on the reverse records the sitter, the dates of the sittings, and the materials of the work.
On the reverse of every Painting
Sitter, sittings, medium, dimensions, year
Written by hand, as it has always been done.
The Letter
A short letter from the studio, monthly. One painting, one paragraph, occasional sittings offered to the list first.
Correspondence
Contact
© Andy Maier · Seattle · andymaier.art