During Biden’s first SOTU, in 2022, I staked out the bathroom outside the House chamber, a popular spot for members who’d been pregaming over dinner.

NPR had me on the following morning with The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky who I mistakenly referred to as editor of The Nation.

I emailed Tomasky to apologize after our segment. He said, in essence, no sweat and pitch me anytime. So I did! And I’ve been reporting for The New Republic ever since.

By Biden’s 2nd SOTU, I was an emerging artist, so I brought a sketch pad and pencil to draw the reporters staking out the long processions of luminaries that walk through Statuary Hall on their way to the House chamber. Here’s one of the sketches I drew last year — 

The sketch hung on my fridge for over a year, reminding me each day of the art potential of SOTU. So this month at Biden’s 3rd SOTU, I made my move, bringing a full-on oil painting kit to the Capitol. Speaker Johnson’s team gave me the green light to paint above Statuary Hall, and the rest was history.

Artist’s Note

The paintings I banged out during SOTU were hindered by two factors — 

• Inexperience. I haven’t live painted much. The 4 to 7 portraits I paint each week are almost entirely based on reference photos.

• Lighting. A floodlight from a news broadcaster was shining directly up at me during SOTU, hindering my ability to see color properly.

The result is two canvases that still require some extra work before I’d call them final versions. That that end, I’ve begun color correcting the lower one while I decide what to do next with one up top — 

Whether either of these will hang in the Speaker’s office has yet to be determined. Nancy Pelosi’s team hung one of my pop art portraits of her in the press room of the Speaker’s suite. Kevin McCarthy’s speakership didn’t much engage with my portraits which, to be fair, is probably because I only had time to paint him once before he was vacated.

Anyway, my C-SPAN debut, which you can watch above if you haven’t already, went mini-viral. A reporter for Washingtonian reached out to write a profile of me as an oil painter. She came to my studio last night with a photographer to interview me and some of my painting friends. I’ll be sure to share the profile here when it runs. Meanwhile, feel free to contact me directly about commissions.

Happy Friday!

— Pablo

Anyway, I’ve painted four Bernie portraits over the last year or so — two during the August recess which began three weeks ago. I decided to challenge myself with both of my recess portraits of Bernie by incorporating news things. For Bernie No. 3, I tried out a new color on my palette: Transparent Orange which, as you can see, is the incredibly loud, powerful pigment in the background of Bernie No. 3 — 

Transparent Orange is notable for its warm yellow undertone, which You can see in the bottom right of Bernie No. 3. Winsor & Newton, a London-based oil manufacturer, created the pigment I used on the painting. This was a break from my usual orthodoxy of using all-American painting supplies, but the Gamblin version was out of stock at the Blick Art store downtown.

Bernie No. 3 was my first portrait of the August recess this year. Overall, I’m satisfied with the way it turned out. I was inspired to use the orange background by "Protagonist of an Endless Story”, a 1993 portrait by the late Angel Rodriguez Diaz that’s currently on display in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) — 

Rodriguez-Diaz is one several excellent Latino portraits the NPG has had on temporary display in the last year-or-so. Someday mine, too, will be on display in a Smithsonian, perhaps the NPG. Of that, I have no doubt. But it’ll be a while. The gulf between my talent and the nation’s best portraitist remains wide, despite that it’s narrowing fast.

My goal as a portraitist is to enter the Smithsonian’s Outwin Boochever national portrait competition in 2025 and be a finalist by the end of the decade. The Outwin is like the art MVP of American portraitists. It’s a huge deal to be included, let alone be selected as a finalist by the panel of seven judges (4 artists, 3 Smithsonian curators).

To that end, where Transparent Orange was the new thing I tried on Bernie No. 3, the hands were the focus of Bernie No. 4 —

Hands are one of the hardest elements for a portraitist to tackle when making a person come alive on canvas. As a public figure, Bernie is known for speaking with his hands and shoulders. Whether a stump speech as a candidate or floor debate in the Senate, Bernie uses his hands to illustrate his points.

• Side note: As artificial intelligence takes over a lot of creative tasks, AI image have failed so far to replicate human hands in a way that look real, or natural. The problem, according to programmers, is that while an AI can identify what a hand is, replicating functionally what a hand does is a very different story. The result is that AI generated images of hands tend to produce mangled fingers pointed in unnatural directions. With that in mind, I’ve been focusing more and more on learning how to make hands in my art.

Bernie No. 4 has been one of my most-popular portraits so far. The image has gotten a ton of engagement online from the senator’s supporters. This has been highly satisfying, since it took me forrrrever to make his hands here. Each hand took about two or three times as long as his face to finish. A friend who saw the portrait told me that the portraitists who paint committee chairs in the House of Representatives charge double or more for images that include hands. Good to know, perhaps for future reference ;)

Welp, that’s it for now. If you read this far, consider sharing this post with anyone who might find it interesting. I’ve picked up some artist followers on this newsletter which is very exciting. To this end, I created an “Art” vertical for posts like this one. You can find it on the top bar of pabloreports.com, beside “Reporting”. Happy Tuesday!

"How old is she?" was always the question about Maybel. "She won't say," was always my answer, drawing a chuckle from neighbors and passersby who came to know Maybel, my beautiful senior pup, as the chillest dog on the block.

Maybel and I met in October, 2020. I was renting an apartment above DC Petropolis, a first rate dog grooming salon owned and operated by Gabi, an entrepreneur from Argentina, who first told me about Maybel.

"She's perfect for your apartment," said Gabi. "A total couch potato." No truer words were ever said about my sweet angel, who mostly napped, snacked, and snuggled her way through an election, insurrection, inauguration, my first days on the Capitol beat, and my first oil paintings.

Indeed, the thirty-three months Maybel and I spent together as best friends were a sprint through a crazy stretch of American political history that changed my life forever and continues now without her.

In her memory, I oil painted her portrait, choosing a looser style and more expansive color palette than I usually use in animal portraits. Maybel loved when I painted her … and got jealous when I painted other dogs. She’d like this portrait, I think, which now hangs prominently on the wall of our apartment where I’ll always remember her perfect smile –

Something cute to watch…

If you’re on TikTok and want to see something super cute, here is a video of Maybel from the night she visited me at the Capitol during Kevin McCarthy’s race for House Speaker in January.

@pabloreportsmaybel visits the capitol #doggo #congress #senate #houseofrepresentatives

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Because McCarthy hadn’t been elected Speaker yet, the House couldn’t pass a rules package — meaning in the moment there were no rules, technically, which didn’t preclude doggos like my sweet angel from roaming the corridors. So she did —

Maybel was so happy to visit me that night. She couldn’t stop smiling. So many reporters, Capitol Police, and staffers who knew Maybel from visits to my apartment or picnics in Logan Circle stopped what they were doing (which was mostly just waiting around for the next House vote to be called) to say hello. When votes finally let out, several members of Congress — Dems and Republicans — stopped to introduce themselves to Maybel, who was overjoyed to meet them.

Miss you, girl. May you rest in eternal peace (and snacks).

"Every color has its emotional resonance." — Robert Gamblin

Note: An updated version is signed ‘PABLO” and the shield is desaturated, but you get the idea. I’m calling the series “Portraits of Officer Eugene Goodman”. The series has become my pride and joy as an artist. It’s not every day a bonafide American hero asks an artist for a portrait —

“It belongs in a museum.” — Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.