Leah Tinari is a contemporary artist I’ve become fond of recently. I love her contemporary subject matter, her response to this sort of party culture with its social media connection. Here is her statement:
“My work has consistently been based on photographs of my friends and family. This show, Perfect Strangers, is exactly what the title implies—portraits of total strangers. The portraits show a broad range of ages and races, so there is no single contingent in this body of work. It is exciting to see the diversity of people who pass though a gallery in a month’s time. These portraits are clearly reflective of contemporary society, but also recall Renaissance paintings. The paintings have a strong primary color scheme, are dense with draped fabric, and the subjects have many layers of clothes and accessories due to the timing of the exhibition. There is also a self-consciousness to the subjects posing in front of the camera in the photo booth; the same self-consciousness I imagine a subject would have had posing for a Renaissance painter when his or her likeness was being captured. At first glance this seems far-fetched because the portraits are clearly contemporary portraits in every way, but if I sit with them for a little longer, I begin to think about the paintings by Titian and Vermeer. “
This drawing is a study of a collage I posted last week. I've always wanted to do these paintings of my peers, contemporary figures, hipsters and myself placed in antique, affluent and aristocratic environments.
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