Barkley L. Hendricks paints two men embracing in Hasty Tasty.

It goes like this: The couple take a blissful walk down the street, capturing Hendrick’s attention. So the artist pulls out a camera as they continue down the street, hand in hand.A candid. This is how Hendricks begins a portrait. With a camera. 

When choosing subjects to paint, Hendricks steps out onto the streets and chooses everyday people from his surroundings, nothing performed or posed. Hendricks was known to be seen scouting subjects in Philadelphia, where he grew up, and in New Haven, where he studied art at Yale.While other artists sketched out what they intended to paint, Hendricks worked straight from a photograph, turning out huge canvases. Hasty Tasty is one of many works where he used this process to paint. 

Gay activism in the 1970s in the United States made for huge societal transformations. Of course, despite the strides made during this time, homophobia remained present. Hasty Tasty, made on such a large scale, confronts the audience with a sweet picture of this interracial gay couple in love, proudly walking together in public. In choosing these marginalized subjects, Hendrick's work takes on a deeper political meaning, normalizing a relationship that would have not been readily accepted by many in Philadelphia at the time. 

Hendricks also maintains each subject's unique street style when painting them, a way of capturing their persona and individuality through clothing. In Hasty Tasty, Hendricks titles the painting after the t-shirt one of the men wears. While keeping the details of their clothing, Hendricks omits the backdrop,  placing them against a flat, bright blue, monochrome backdrops being another stylish staple of Hendricks’s portraits.