As a painter, Tom Lawson invigorates the history of the medium with discordant colors and difficult compositions, with delightful, sensuous imagination. For this MOCAtv interview, Lawson discusses the centricity of the face to his eccentric practice, from his initial encounter with a Rembrandt, to situating portraiture within the tradition of patronage, to the strategies and stakes of his Vouge commission of fashion designer Hedi Slimane: taking on portraiture's dynamics of gaze, which often serve to create a link of identification between the artist and viewer. For this Vouge commission, Lawson squares that idea, offering Slimane mid-sentence, mid-conversation. He figures the designer in double, creating movement in a fixed medium out of the changes in Slimane's posture, gaze, and engrossingly precise (if not larger than life) hand gestures.