Adina Carapetian
Riverside Girls High School
AT FACE VALUE
Painting
oil on canvas
My body of work explores the complexities of identity which extend beyond a physical image to ask whether we can truly know others. Inspired by classical works of old masters, I united traditional realism and abstract oil painting techniques. My intent is to expose how individuals can manipulate how they present themselves to others. In expressing our innermost thoughts, opinions, needs and desires we can break the facade we hide behind which distorts how we are perceived. My work questions what we really know about others, and expresses the depth of a person behind what you see ‘at face value’.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Henrik Uldalen, Lee K, Caravaggio.
Marker's Commentary
Three portraits of young adults, each immersed in their own thoughts have been painted in a realist style demonstrating a Classical understanding of form and technique. Each portrait is framed with a dark background and bathed with Renaissance lighting, illuminating features and casting shadows. The addition of overpainted and expressive glitches evoke powerful thought. There is both ambition and risk in the intervention of these gestural marks, yet rhythm is established in their stylised movement which heightens the concept. The work has been executed with dexterity and finesse. There is exquisite control of brush with delicate blending of skin tone and colour, accentuated by controlled flicks in rendering hair highlights and in painting the glint of moisture in eyes and on lips. The extreme skill in depicting facial features is supported in the tonal modelling of the shirts with their shadows and textural surfaces; the smooth silk surface of the silvery-green shirt, the soft fabric of the t-shirt and crisp-white cotton shirt. Tension is explored in these psychologically charged portraits of life and thought. They evoke a sense of humanity and the internal struggle of each subject with thoughts, memories and contemporary angst. The painting series challenges the audience to see behind outward appearances to examine inner thoughts, reflections and worries. The artist meshes aspects of the past and present and brings the private terrain of the inner world to visualisation.