Elizabeth Peyton

Peyton, born in 1965, paints empathetic portraits of friends, celebrities and politicians. She often works from existing images, like album covers and photos, and her subjects have included John Lennon and Prince William. Peyton typically imbues her figures with an idealized and sometimes androgynous beauty. For W, she painted Michelle and Sasha Obama in the audience at the democratic convention as Barack Obama accepted the presidential nomination. “Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton,” a retrospective, runs through January 11, 2009, at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. it travels to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, the Netherlands.