The Portrait Project: Artists Portraying Artists
From May 6-20, an exhibit of the work of 17 important artists and sculptors, Alix Bailey, Robert Bunkin, Susanna Coffey, Colleen Franca, Leonid Gervits, Valerie Gillett, Howard Gladstone, Yuka Imata, Karen Kaapcke, Eric March, Frances Middendorf, J.William Middendorf, Sharon Moreau, Dena Schutzer, Orly Shiv, Donna Skebo, and Clarissa Payne Uvegi is on view at the Westbeth Atrium in Greenwich Village. This exhibit explores the complex and differing ways in which artists see themselves and others.
Portraiture has always presented artists with questions and dilemmas. Each artist who creates portraits, whether self-portraits or images of others, must confront a broad range of issues: honesty vs. flattery, choice of medium, mood, light and setting, to name just a few.
Each of the gifted artists participating in this exhibit comes at the art of portraiture in a way that is uniquely their own. Yet they are bound together by their consummate skills. Each artist is exhibiting at least one portrait of another participating artist. Begun by Howard Gladstone in 2011, the Portrait Project celebrates an art form currently out of vogue. This exhibit clearly demonstrates that portraiture is not just alive but thriving among a committed and enormously talented group of New York artists. (www.westbeth.org).
Leonid Gervits: Golden Girl (Clarissa). 2015, oil on canvas, 26 by 26 inches