Spotlight On: Faces and Figure
A beautiful mix of artists whose works center on faces and figure. These paintings introduce us to personalities & characters through shape, texture, and brushstrokes. We hope you enjoy reading these thoughts from the artists about their work and backgrounds.
Celeste Keller
My first introduction to Italian Renaissance Art got me hooked on drawing and painting faces and figures. Since that day, there’s been no other subject matter for me : )
For the past few years I’ve been working on a series of underwater self portraits. My husband photographs me in a swimming pool and I paint my image from the photographs. Using the figure underwater allows me to expand the boundaries of realism, creating naturally occurring plays into surrealism.
The stillness of the floating figure and the busy, disruptive reflections of the water are intended to create tension and movement throughout the composition, keeping the viewer engaged as they fluctuate between feelings of serenity and distraction.
Barbara Shore
Barbara has always been drawn to figures. Her depiction of the female form captures a fleeting moment, immersing the viewer In a timeless world, to engage emotions, stimulate memories and build connections.
In Shores’ practice she has worked in the traditional sense with the figure. Barbara has also created abstract works. More recently she has been trying to find a marriage between her figurative and abstract work. Barbara has explored various methods of expression through the fundamentals of colour, design, composition and mark making. She has moved well beyond the traditional brush, incorporating non-traditional tools and methods in her paintings. Barbara goes through the unconscious process of emotional expression by the destruction of the original idea to reveal another. She continues on this path until she feels that she has created a realm that satisfies the emotion of the figure.
By combining tradition with abstraction Barbara has eliminated the pictorial elements and allows a private conversation between the viewer and the painting. For Shore, painting has become and unconscious process of emotional expression.
Beverley Hawksley
I find the human figure to be the perfect container for discovery and reflection.
Each comes with their own story, and I have learned to listen to them and trust their agenda.
Eleanor Lowden
Eleanor Lowden is both fascinated and inspired by people. “My paintings would herald the day, and honour those simple moments that we all take for granted. Walking the dog, shopping, eating, holding hands, talking on the phone, texting. I love to watch crowds of people traveling in different directions, each with their own story and body language, lost in their own thoughts, being in close proximity to people and never connecting. Or perhaps connecting, and that I find equally fascinating and inspiring” These figures provide Eleanor with an endless source of inspiration. Her work is impressionistic, vibrant and loose “I paint with many layers of transparent colour, layering my colours so that they glow. I want the viewer to spend time contemplating both the painting process and the story that I am telling.
Amy Dryer
Frances Hahn
Geoff Farnsworth
My first painting hero was Salvador Dali. I was always attracted to the surreal and dream-like, and really appreciated his immense talent and technique of melding all of his ideas and provocations with such a solid handling of form and representation. As I began painting more on the west coast and then at the Art Students League in New York City from 1997 to 2002, I fell more and more in love with painters who handled form and realism but with abstracted paint handling, varied mark making, and descriptive brushwork. The Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and contemporary figurative artists like Odd Nerdrum really made a mark on me. Training in NYC and being able to study a lot of top notch paintings in person was thrilling! Also, after working in the realism classes at the Art Students League, I then migrated to working in the abstract painting classes to have more room to spread out and begin working on my own body of work.
I spent a lot of time in the class of William Scharf who had been the protege, studio assistant, and friend of Mark Rothko. William Scharf allowed me to follow my own direction within a figurative discipline, but his promptings, questions, and suggestions began to bring the thread of New York Abstract Expressionism to meld into my work also. Process, colour concerns, and mark making with abstract compositional considerations began to meld into my realist approach. Ever since this time and with moving and painting in Toronto, then Thunder Bay, and now in Niagara... my approach to painting is one that straddles the realms of realism, abstraction, and discovery.
Marina Nazarova
The figurative element has always been present in my work. I feel that there is so much to discover about a portrait as well as my relation to it and perception of it. For me a portrayed person offers endless possibilities to see the self and its shifting nature.
Thomas Sinclair
I use the human figure with faces towards the heavens, hands up and palms in the air. They are in the same pose as on the rock walls that my ancient ancestors left behind to tell their stories. The human figures raised arms are an expression of gratitude and humility. The true teachings and spirit of woodland art is to try to express the spiritual relationship, connection and communication the human being has to nature. The people will often be part animal and have plants, flowers or berries growing from them to show the natural connection that we have to all of creation. The human beings in the images I paint are always in a state of gratitude and humility for the gift of life.
Jim Bourke
Kate Domina
My portraits are composites of multiple people through the lens of a child. When it comes to understanding the human condition I think children are beacons; they have yet to have their creativity and authenticity curbed through conditioning. My work aims to connect with the unconditioned child within oneself. I truly believe that celebrating what makes someone different from everyone else is the key to having a fulfilling relationship with the world, and oneself.
Maca Suazo
I am inspired by literature. Sometimes it is a moment in a novel, or a line of poetry, some other times it is a scene or a dialogue between characters. This is my first impulse to produce a painting. I carry this idea with me, as if it were a melody, while I start to layer the canvas or wood panel. Once I have set several layers of colour using a pallet knife, I began to “see” the characters appear on the texture of paint. In all honesty, I do not plan them, they just “happen” to appear in relation to the first idea. The figures are to me characters on a stage, playing their roles purposefully. I listen to their voices and give them some room to tell their story. The colours I use are carefully placed according to the atmosphere or mood in the literature that guided me.
Sherry Czekus
I'm drawn to the figure in painting for a few reasons.
Painting has become a means to the study of something. It’s a slow process that maps out the entire surface of the subject matter and so as the painter, it becomes an act of learning about the subject. The 'figure' offers versatility for painters especially the figures congregated in an urban crowd. I'm drawn to the possibilities through the synchronicity of the moving parts of the crowd and the way they oscillate between the real and abstracted moments.
Heather Millar
In a world that is obsessed with beauty and perfection, I strive to highlight the imperfect with my figurative work. We all have physical insecurities that seem very real to us but insignificant to others, and seeing people in a vernacular setting, specifically in vintage photos, is the most thrilling to me. These are people who were just being real, lost in a vulnerable moment, caught in the most indelible way. My goal is always to capture the truth of each figure and let that beauty within shine outwards.