atthew Shepard was a University of Wyoming student who was murdered in the fall of 1998 for being gay.  The crime sent shockwaves of outrage throughout the gay community.  For this picture, I aimed at an impressionistic style, rather than the fastidious concern for accuracy in my other portraits.  The technique here is a furtherance of the one used in the Lyndon Johnson portrait.   The slightly distorted feel of the face occurred because I purposefully spent lest time with preparation of the likeness, and more time putting down textured lights and darks fueled by emotion.  The ambiguous background is representative of nothing, put there simply to balance the composition.  Some interpret is as trees, others as draping.  This painting has drawn the most tepid responses of any of my work, mostly because of the disturbing imagery, and the lack of idealized romanticism that has been my style in the past.