This painting commemorates a great artistic friendship and rivalry. Aaron Bohrod and his subject, the older Ivan Albright, became friends in Chicago where they spent the early part of their careers. Each made still-life paintings that required great technical skill, time, and patience to achieve a look of hand-painted reality. Albright pushed his images to an extreme, often spending a decade on single paintings that meditate of the meaning of life and death. Bohrod playfully alluded to this in his portrait by including a tube of black paint, a moth, and a burnt-out cigarette.
