Preview Exhibition

Last Saturday I hosted a one night only Preview Exhibition of my latest paintings. With the help of my Art Preparator (boyfriend) we were able to clear out one entire room of the apartment as a gallery and hang work throughout the rest of the place. I even cleaned up my studio in the basement and hid the rat traps for the brave souls that were interested in venturing down there to see some of my work still in progress. 

The place was filled with people from before 5 to well after 10pm. Five of my models/subjects were able to attend and see the completed portraits for the first time, (as well as many of their friends and family, and mine too!). I had a total of eight of the twelve double portraits displayed with three of my single portraits filling in some empty wall space. 

One of the things that is always great about showing this series is how diverse people's reactions are to the expressions in the portraits. There were a lot of people that new the subject's personally and were able to have, in some ways, a more intimate connection. 

A lot of the comments that I received were about how I chose to portray each person- for example, some of the men that are known to be comedians and always seem to be laughing and smiling are portrayed in more serious moments. Another guy that typically looks pretty serious is shown laughing. One person described it as showing their vulnerability- that the shots I chose to portray of them are maybe not how they usually come off to people, but a side that is not often seen. 

It's always great to have people look at your work- otherwise the motivation can run dry and you can start to wonder why you spend so much time making these things that are getting stacked up in the basement and take up half the moving truck every time you move.... I'm not represented by a gallery and haven't really started to pursue gallery representation. I've been waiting so long to develop work that I felt is strong that now I'm wondering if that is the next move I want to make. 

I know there are a lot of artist's that don't go the "gallery route" and do just fine. They participate in shows in non-commercial spaces and develop a collector base on their own. While I think the gallery is an important part of that thing we call the Art World, I'm starting to realize that for so long I considered getting into a gallery the goal and hadn't been considering the many alternatives. All that to say that this exhibition, though small and in my home, was one of the ideas I came up with. 

If you missed it, the next show lined up is in March 2010 at Fermilab Gallery. The series will be on display through May and at some point in March I will be giving a lecture on the work (date TBD).