THE CBPP
LEFT Ian Goldsmith, Reflective Study in
Chromatic Darks, oil on panel, 21x26cmBELOW LEFT Owain Hunt, The Painter’s
Mother, oil on canvas, 38x48cmidentity while making an irreverent nod to the traditions
of portraiture with its scrawled crown.
The group engages very strongly with social media,
in particular Instagram, to provide a vital, discursive space
for portrait artists to encourage one another and trade
opportunities of all kinds. On a practical level, such a
forum offers artists the chance to share works in progress,
to compare aesthetic and technical approaches, and also
to compare notes on marketing, pricing, copyright and
legal matters. Social media has, in addition, caused
seismic shifts in the way artists sell and market their work,
meaning that the traditional gallery model (where artists
typically had to pay up to 50% commission) is changing.
Artists are selling work directly to fans, offering flash sales
via Instagram Stories. Art is becoming more affordable
and, as a result, painted portraits feel less and less like
the exclusive preserve of the rich and famous.
Social media seems to be fuelling creativity in a wider
sense, too, with access to practical tips and education
emerging to fill a void in which fewer mainstream art
schools share traditional art techniques. People are also
painting one another from images shared via the net
(challenging old assumptions about the purism of drawing
from life), and even including internet imagery like emojis,
stickers, and digital glitches in the actual work itself.
These influences can be felt in the paintings of group
member Peter Davis, who directly engages with technology
in his Zeitgeist portraits, which cleverly subvert the
outward gaze of traditional portraiture by depicting people
poring over their screens, their faces lit up by the addictive
media they consume. This theme is also taken up in the
work of Ilsa Brittain, whose 2017 Self-Portrait has her
entire face obscured by a camera phone, referencing the
selfie tradition which has come to obsess social media
users. Our relationship with self and others is changing
in the 21st century, and portraiture can serve a vital role
in exploring this.OWAIN HUNT
What’s the best tip for achieving an accurate likeness?
“Go beyond simply aiming for a physical likeness. A computer
could create a perfectly accurate physical likeness, but I don’t
believe a computer can create good art. Art is about emotion,
and good art is reactive not prescriptive. A portrait artist
should think about how the energy between the sitter and
them is imbued in what they create. Vincent van Gogh
created his paintings in a matter of days and Lucian Freud
took thousands of hours to paint a single piece, yet both
succeeded in loading every brushstroke with a huge amount
of emotion.”
http://www.owainhunt.com