GRAYDON PARRISH & CARMEN DELL’OREFICE MEETING THE MUSE
The first time Graydon Parrish set eyes on Carmen Dell’Orefice, he knew he wanted to paint her. “I thought she was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever seen. So intriguing,” he recalls. At the time, Parrish (b. 1970) was living and painting in Amherst, Massachusetts. Carmen (as she’s known) was a celebrated fashion model living in New York City. The Carmen that Parrish saw that day was a photograph on an advertising poster, and the prospect of meeting the real Carmen — let alone asking her to sit for a portrait — seemed unlikely. Nevertheless, the artist filed away his mental image of Carmen in what he calls his “private list of 10 people I want to paint before I die.”
After all, who was to say the two wouldn’t cross paths someday? “The wonderful thing about being an artist is you meander through different social circles,” Parrish notes. And as the tale of “when Graydon met Carmen” demonstrates, the world is indeed
