Valerie Brennan interviews painter Jen Hitchings about her work.

Hitchings comments: "I paint from photographs, usually of a group of people at a party or some kind of celebration. They're always of very sporadic and candid moments. I'll usually draw from the photograph first, and then make the painting from the drawing. The first moments on the canvas are always the most terrifying for me. I'll sometimes paint an irrelevant landscape, or use a palette inspired by some image in my studio to start. Once the canvas is covered with paint, I'll start painting from the drawing. A lot of things in the original photograph make it into the painting, proportions are often accurate, but during the process of painting many objects/figures grow and become attached to one another."