Overly Attached Girlfriend
Oil on canvas · 40 × 40 cm · 2024
This one joins my Memes series — internet memes reimagined in oil.
Overly Attached Girlfriend is built around one unblinking stare into the camera, captioned with lines that turn ordinary affection into something a few notches past healthy. I’ll admit I never quite got the joke, though: if anything, I think people should care more about each other, not less. Sure, there’s a line where caring tips into something else — but crossing that line isn’t funny either, just concerning. So the whole subtext of this meme is honestly lost on me.
For my oil painting class, I picked her as a subject purely to practice skin and hair — they make or break a portrait, and I find them notoriously difficult to paint. What I hadn’t bargained for was the computer screen she’s staring into: the cold, faintly alien blue it throws across a face in a dark room turned out to be way harder to fake convincingly than either the skin or the hair I was actually there to practice. I’m fairly pleased with how both came out, but the background — let’s not even go there. If anyone ever compliments this picture, I’ll say “thank you, it’s called impressionism,” and gently suggest they get their eyes checked.