Pink Armchair Portraits
Painting, Storytelling, and Video
Step into the studio and experience the evolving series of Pink Armchair Portraits. During his residency at Project 14C in the spring of 2026, artist Ben Fine teamed up with journalist Tris McCall, seeking to expand the project beyond portraiture by incorporating the voices and stories of each participant. Together, they interviewed and painted sitters simultaneously, documenting the process on video.
The project explored words and pigment side by side, creating a growing archive of faces, voices, and community. Supported in part by a 2026 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the series continues to grow as an ongoing exploration of connection, identity, and the shared human experience.
How it started
The Pink Armchair Portrait Project began during COVID, when painter Ben Fine, searching for connection amid isolation, spent 18 months creating twelve portraits of friends and family—sometimes separated by plexiglass. The pink armchair emerged as both symbol and stage: a worn, mid-century, living-room recliner anchoring each portrait in a shared physical setting. Seated in the same chair, each sitter occupies a space that is at once communal and deeply personal, revealing subtle threads of connection between strangers while allowing every individual to inhabit their own distinct emotional universe. First exhibited together in a grid, the portraits generated unexpected visual and emotional resonances, highlighting individuality within a common framework and affirming the resilience and vitality of collective human presence.
Taking it on the road
Since then, The Pink Armchair Portraits has grown into an ambitious, evolving series—an ever-expanding constellation of friends, acquaintances, artists, writers, and chance encounters. One chair, one sitter, one moment at a time, it gathers fragments of humanity into a single living work. Rooted in Jersey City, the project has recently evolved into a new iteration: live, expressive Sharpie portraits drawn in under seven minutes. As it begins to travel beyond the city, the Pink Armchair Project continues to expand its archive, deepening its portrait of everyday humanity.