SILOAM SPRINGS — Paul Gill’s brown eyes peer out from the painted canvas. Brushstrokes define his features — angular jawline, strong chin and slightly lowered left eyelid. He looks just the way Siloam Springs artist Kyle Henry intended.

The portrait is a lasting image of the New York native and firefighter who died Sept. 11, 2001, beneath the collapsed Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. It was exactly five months after his 34th birthday.

Off duty that day, Gill didn’t make it to his carpentry job at the Twin Towers. When the father of two boys heard about the airplanes that crashed into them, Gill instead headed to Engine Company 54 of the New York Fire Department. He donned his gear and went to help.

Gill was on the 21 st floor of the Marriott hotel, connected to the south tower when it collapsed. The north tower had fallen when he went in, Henry says. Gill, who had been with the department less than two years, was among 15 men from his firehouse to die that day.

Henry fashioned a head-and-shoulders image of Gill on a 20-by-24-inch canvas, bordered by a 3-inch-wide wood frame. The portrait is a gift to his family.

"It’s like he’s at peace," Henry says of the portrait.

His oil painting is part of Portrait Project 9/11, started by Margaret Herman of Cary, N.C. Her sister-in-law, Wendy McArthur, a portrait artist in Atlanta, was bemoaning how little anyone could do to help in the aftermath, particularly for the victims’ families. She couldn’t right the wrong. But, as an artist, she wanted to paint them all. Herman, not a painter herself, decided she could organize a smaller version of this ambitious idea by sending e-mails and finding portrait artists willing to donate their time and talents.

They started with the 343 dead firefighters, putting an announcement about the project in the Uniformed Fire Officers Association newsletter. This drew in some families — although many weren’t emotionally ready and still aren’t. An artist friend who manages the A Stroke of Genius web site for portrait artists started collecting names of interested artists.

WORLDWIDE RESPONSES

Responses came from across the country and around the world — Canada, South America, South Africa and India among other locales. About 250 artists have agreed to paint portraits, and about 50 portraits have been completed, Herman says.

While the project was originally shortterm, she thinks it will last much longer. Many families likely want to do this and simply can’t yet. She wants every family that wants one to receive a portrait.

"People are still having trouble getting out of bed in the morning," Herman says.

Spouses requested portraits more than other family members, but some parents and siblings also wanted the lasting images, she says.

One such set of parents are John and Georgette Gill, Paul Gill’s father and stepmother. They wanted to honor Gill in this way largely because he was a self-taught artist himself, with talent handed down from his father’s father.

"To John, it really has special significance. It’s sort of carrying on Paul’s legacy," Georgette Gill says.

John Gill says the image of his only son is remarkable.

"When artists get ahold of something, they put meaning to it. They see something we don’t see," John Gill says.

The image of the Storm Trooper action figure tucked in his black fire helmet is a reminder of the time he took his son to see Star Wars as a boy. It hints at the firefighter’s quirky sense of humor.

"He loved his job, and it reflects in the painting. You see him smiling," John Gill says. "These firemen, they didn’t think about themselves. That’s what they had to do."

John Gill is comforted knowing that when photographs have faded, this portrait of his son will remain with his grandsons, Aaron, 15, and Joshua, 12. "Art has its own meaning because it’s created differently. It’s created from the mind and the heart and the hands," Gill says.

The painting will hang in their College Point home in Queens. From here, Gill sees the city skyline every day and remembers.

"It’s missing something," he says.

The Gills and Henry forged a friendship through phone calls and e-mail messages. Paul Gill’s son Aaron, who had a kidney transplant seven years ago, has been ill since his body began rejecting it in July, Georgette Gill says. Henry, a religious man, has been praying for Aaron, who now needs another transplant.

"That, to me, is what has sustained our family," she says.

Memories and photographs of Gill’s life can be found on the Web site she keeps at www.angelfire.com/ny5 /paulgill. The portrait was fashioned from the photograph on its main page.

"He captured Paul. He really did," said Georgette Gill, who received the portrait just more than a week ago. "It’s really inspirational."

COMING TOGETHER

When Henry learned about the project through the portrait artist Web site in February, he knew this was the way he could contribute and immediately signed up. He was paired with the Gill family in May.

Georgette Gill sent Henry a packet of items, including a program from her stepson’s memorial service and 8-by-10 color photographs of Gill and Engine 54. He used these and conversations with the Gills to get a sense of Paul Gill’s personality.

"I really wanted to capture his spirit," Henry says. "I hope when they look at that they really see him and that it really kind of speaks back to them and touches them."

Henry’s brother-in-law, Walker Waddy, is a firefighter for Gwinnett County in the suburbs northeast of Atlanta, his own hometown. He understood a firefighter’s job before last year’s attacks, but he thinks the general public now has a greater respect for them.

Henry, 27, began painting five years ago and only started doing portraits in 1999, when he graduated from Pensacola Christian College in Florida and moved to Arkansas. He was trained in the traditional, realistic manner by professor and mentor Brian Jekel.

"You definitely want it to be a piece of art first," he says. "Especially in a posthumous portrait, you’re not out simply to copy a photograph. It’s my vision and how I paint and my style... and basically how I saw it and how I want it portrayed."

Henry, a concept designer for gifts at DaySpring Cards, has always drawn people in pencil drawings and most enjoys his subjects’ expressions. He usually takes 75 to 100 photographs of a subject during a photo session, detailing features and capturing different expressions and angles in controlled lighting.

The photo of Paul gill was straight-on, with Gill in uniform at his previous post, Ladder 119. "I liked his face and his expression, his character. He looked like a New Yorker," Henry says.

Pursuing a Rembrandt quality, Henry concentrated on Gill’s face — brightened under a spot of light — with no details on his jacket and his helmet as the edges fade into a dark background. He changed the number to 54 on his helmet for his last post, with white numbers on a patch of red.

A LASTING EFFECT

Henry spent about 20 hours painting and an equal amount of time preparing with preliminary studies and figuring out the background. He’s satisfied with the portrait’s "dreamlike" effect.

"I really hope it’s something that they can enjoy," he says. "This is their son, and all they have left are their memories and their photographs. And this is something that’s an enduring piece of art. ... I can’t imagine their grief and how hard it is."

Living so far away and unclear about what to do with his initial feelings of sympathy and compassion for the victims, Henry now feels he was able to help in the most appropriate way.

"It just kind of made me feel like a little bit more of a part of what happened," he says.

Henry feels a connection to the family, to Gill and to the painting that is now in New York.

"This guy, I mean, he is a hero," he says. "He died in one of our nation’s largest tragedies."

Although the painting is with Gill’s family, Henry retains a connection. He keeps a bookmark with one of Gill’s pen and ink images inside a favorite book of John Howard Sanden’s portraits.

"It really kind of hits home and makes it personal, instead of people on the news," Henry says of this project.

He remembers the artist who died a hero.