Confluence gallery in Readsboro will open its second season on May 6 with a show of portraiture.
The show, titled Exploring Portraiture, is curated by gallery manager John Walker. The show explores four different artists' take on the general idea of making and using portraits in art, and includes a broad range of materials and intentions.
Explaining his choice of opening the season with a portrait show, Walker said in a news release, “We get large amounts of information from other people's expressions and those expressions are universal to humanity. And yet each face is unique … a paradox. I was recently interested to learn that the tradition of formal record portraiture is still fairly strong. That rekindled my interest.”
Exploring Portraiture will feature area artists whose work ranges from ceramic busts to photographic collages. Also in the mix are straight ahead portrait paintings in oils by Julia Dixon and fine photographic portraits by Ann Floriani.
Diane Sullivan says of her ceramic sculptures, “Dancers, circus acrobats, women who use their bodies to express themselves has fascinated me ... this figural work is centered on the idea of persona and the stories revealed by the public faces and postures we assume.”
Laura Christensen, who creates photographic collages, incorporating painting and century-old photographs, explains her process and goals this way: “Like family and friends of the depicted, I pay extraordinary attention to each photograph. But with a different eye. By the time I find these old photographs, the chain of personal connections has broken. Their subjects are freed to become characters cast and costumed, part of another story.”
Julia Dixon's facile but strong portraits in oil on canvas lend true portraiture credentials to the show, according to the news release. That is, “they are portraits painted of people and meant to look like the people that sat before the artist,” a perhaps reassuring form of picture-making for those who like the classic vein of portraiture.
Photographic portraits by local photographer Ann Floriani round out the show.