Patrick Mahomes' Super Bowl-winning essence seen in portrait by local artist Jenny McGee

How big is Patrick Mahomes? Depends on where you check.

Pro Football Reference lists him at 6 feet, 2 inches and 225 pounds. Kansas City Chiefs fans no doubt would say their starting quarterback is 10 stories tall at all the right moments.

In Jenny McGee's basement studio, Mahomes fits neatly across a 24-inch by 36-inch canvas. But the two-time Super Bowl champ — primed to play for a possible third this Sunday — loses none of his swagger, his internal fire, his dedication to the game in McGee's portrait. Through acrylic paint, two decades' worth of collected paper and other media, the mid-Missouri artist dynamically harnesses Mahomes' essence.

McGee's one-of-one painting, "Mahomes Showtime," is on sale for right at $15,000, but the artist also offers a wide variety of "unlimited edition" prints accessible to Chiefs fans from Columbia to Kansas City and beyond.

Learning to see football as an art form

A mainstay on the mid-Missouri art scene, McGee's work ranges from soulful abstraction, paintings which somehow make our invisible interior landscapes visible, to a sort of hyper-regional realism. In a more recent series, she used the art of collage to capture what's innately special about local landmarks such as the McBaine Burr Oak, Broadway Diner or iconic ground on the University of Missouri campus.

With hindsight, and rehearsing the affirmation she so freely passes to others, McGee arrived at "peace with change, and recognizing my inspiration changes daily," she said. Less and less constrained by style, she cherishes the freedom to chase inspiration wherever the light hits.

With "Mahomes Showtime," McGee followed — and bumped headlong into — a once-unlikely muse. She didn't grow up with an interest in football and, to hear her tell it, held a "surface-level judgmental" attitude toward the game. Whatever she could find to quietly complain about, from unnecessary roughness to over-funding, she did.

But McGee married into a Pittsburgh Steelers clan and, with years' worth of observations, internalized her family's joy and sense of community around football. McGee embraced a new intention — to try and discover something in the game.

"With more understanding, I began to see it more as an art form," she said.

Learning about the intricacy of specific plays and looking closer, she recognized "how delicate (players') movements are — and these shifts and these lefts and these rights and these jumps and these spins were all purposeful and they’re all strategic and they’re all part of a greater plan," she said.

More than defensive alignments, or evasive yards after the catch, McGee noticed an "ethos" in the Chiefs' manner of play that meets so much of her work. The current team possesses a "winning spirit" that has less to do with the final score, more to do with resilience and community-building.

When describing the team, McGee repeats hallmarks of her work. A cancer survivor and close witness to other people's experiences of suffering, she weaves testimonies to perseverance through her work, whether abstract or representational.

Portraying Patrick Mahomes' 'energy in motion'

With no real expectation imposed upon the artist, a certain liberation attends the work of portraying a subject you've never met, McGee said. Watching Mahomes on Sundays, noticing how much he conveys with just a facial expression, she invested time and attention capturing that primal roar.

"That’s energy in motion," she said.

McGee sifted 20 years of collected paper — grass paper, scrap paper, Japanese printmaking paper and more — to create the colorful geometry around Mahomes. These circles of support stand in for crowds physically and emotionally behind their adopted players. The entire composition is meant to replicate a camera's eye-view, McGee said, with the quarterback in focus and the fans blurred but no less meaningful.

McGee turned to her fellow fans for suggested keywords that aren't so much hidden as embedded within the frame: names of Mahomes' wife and kids, the values central to his life and leadership.

Again, despite the newness of her subject matter, McGee sees an unbroken line between the portrait and her greater catalog. She wants to offer viewers "an aesthetic reason, through my art, to feel great about themselves, to feel hopeful, to feel that extra sense of uplift and that they’re being seen and cared for in some way," she said.

She, of course, hopes the original painting sells but daydreams about the fates blowing word of her portrait all the way to Patrick and Brittany Mahomes; a gift to them wouldn't be out of the question, she said.

For those seeking a different price point, prints of "Mahomes Showtime" can be ordered on McGee's website, overlaid on everything from paper to canvas and wood, even puzzles, mugs and more. These items start around $32 and vary based on the medium.

And as far as Sunday's game against the San Francisco 49ers goes, McGee predicts an overtime Chiefs win indicative of Mahomes' clutch heroics and the team's season.

"They’re so good at the drama," she said.

Check out available options and learn more about McGee's work at https://www.artistjennymcgee.com/.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Patrick Mahomes portrait reflects artist's newfound love of football