Porous: Portraits of Dissolving Identity

These works begin with the language of the historical portrait: formal poses, elaborate costumes, theatrical lighting and the carefully composed authority of the painted sitter. But something has gone slightly awry. Faces dissolve, stretch and fragment; bodies merge with their surroundings; identities become uncertain.
Portraiture has traditionally told us who someone is—wealthy, powerful, respectable, important. Here, that certainty begins to unravel. Faces become landscapes, biological forms, memories or impossible geometries. Lines escape the body, as though the sitter can no longer quite contain themselves.
The paintings sit somewhere between reverence and irreverence: drawn to the beauty and authority of the old masters while quietly pulling the rug from underneath them. Porous: What Lies Within explores identity as something unstable, performed and continually rewritten.

Original paintings and limited edition prints available for acquisition. Enquire to purchase.