Portrait

Comment

Comment by Guram Shavdia on May 2, 2012 at 2:47pm

Thank you very much for your comments. I painted it in one breath. I wanted to make it simple not a "tasty painting". The portrait is one of drawings in a series "Bicycles". After my cycle was pinched in Holland, I'd tried to compensate emotions in such way.
Yes, it is on corrugated cardboard.

Comment by Resident Curator on May 1, 2012 at 12:24pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

I favor the charcoal roughness of this portrait, which also displays a certain contrasting formality due to the symmetrical balance and more fragile line work.  The blue ground conveys a casual coolness, countering the coarse (corrugated cardboard?) tie.  I also read it as having a certain degree of whimsy, and ease. The shaped support helps to impart a synthesis of object and illusionary space, which is interestingly absent in your other pieces displayed here. That being said, I do really love the painterly approach to Block House.  The cobalt blue central structure seems to melt into the surrounding snowy ground, as the lighter tint of blue radiates from its edges and fades into ancillary hues. Warmer brown tones then seem to be scumbled over or under pale grey, infusing the scene with shifts of dispassionate, indistinct light. The small, articulated architectural details corresponding to windows, doors and roof antennae impart a quality of industrialization, or at least a rather barren scene devoid of human interaction and purpose.  But the isolation of the structure overrides any sense of overbearing, as the mood is ultimately more bleak and taciturn.