BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition

DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition:

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Description of Pictures: The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today
April 30, 2022 – February 26, 2023
Every three years, artists living and working in the United States are invited to submit one of their recent portraits to a panel of experts chosen by the museum. The 42 finalists in this year’s edition were selected from more than 2,700 entries. The first-prize winner receives a cash award of $25,000 and a commission to create a portrait of a living person for the museum’s permanent collection.
Their work will be presented in this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery before traveling to other cities in the United States.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SIPGBO_220429_004.JPG: The Outwin 2022 American Portraiture Today
2. SIPGBO_220429_007.JPG: VINCENT VALDEZ People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana) Oil on canvas, 2019 Collection of Alexa Brundage An elderly couple faces us with the gentle authority that old age provides. People of the Sun (Grandma and Grandpa Santana) is a portrait of Vincent Valdez’s maternal grandparents. “My grandparents spent most of their time outside,” the artist recalled. “Grandpa spent his entire life working under the blazing Texas sun as a carpenter and yard worker, cutting lawns in the wealthy communities of San Antonio right up until he passed away. Grandma was constantly working with her hands—raising kids, washing, sewing clothes, and tending the plants in her yard.” The Santanas are depicted in a space defined by details the artist remembers: their vintage AM radio, their plants, their homemade clothes. The bedsheet, like the Virgen de Guadalupe’s aura, signals their spiritual role in the family. This portrait connects the pair to the Indigenous and mestizo cultures of the American Southwest, including the Aztec and Maya, who honored the sun.
3. SIPGBO_220429_017.JPG: The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today presents 42 portraits selected through an open call that garnered more than 2,700 entries from artists working across the United States and Puerto Rico. The artists responded with works that engage contemporary society, many providing new insights into the unprecedented reality we have experienced in the time surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The selected finalists create artworks in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, textiles, video, and performance. They demonstrate how capacious and changing the genre of portraiture can be, and illuminate the genre's power to make visible a multitude of life experiences.
4. SIPGBO_220429_018.JPG: ALISON ELIZABETH TAYLOR First Prize Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning Marquetry hybrid (wood veneers, oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, shellac, and sawdust on wood), 2020 Collection of the artist On walks around her Brooklyn neighborhood during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Alison Elizabeth Taylor encountered the hair groomer Anthony Payne, who, with his workplace shuttered, had taken his scissors, mirror, and chair to the streets. Payne sought to financially support the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and turned over proceeds from his donation-based haircuts to organizations advocating for social justice. Taylor’s process, one she developed and named “marquetry hybrid,” incorporates vivid paints, inkjet prints, and the natural grains of over one hundred veneers. Marquetry, with its inlaid combination of woods, can “memorialize,” Taylor notes. She acknowledges the history of the craft, which was favored by Louis XIV (1654–1715) when he was acquiring furniture for Versailles. By giving Payne this “royal treatment,” Taylor aims to pay tribute to him. “I want him to see how much his example meant to me,” she explained.
5. SIPGBO_220429_025.JPG: PAULA GILLEN Taishya, Riding High over the Ocean of Storms Inkjet print, 2019 Collection of the artist As she imagined a way to escape the conflicts and inequalities on earth, the artist Paula Gillen began a series of digital photomontages that picture women in outer space. “I have created a fictional single-gender society and used it as a platform for female empowerment,” she explains. The ongoing body of work blends the artist’s photography with existing imagery from NASA and vintage magazines. For this portrait, Gillen’s friend Taishya smiles brightly, projecting a powerful and trailblazing presence posed against a luminous lunar backdrop. “The Ocean of Storms” refers to an area on the near side of the moon. When composing the setting, Gillen thought about the connections between bridges and civil rights events. She recalls, for example, the 1965 demonstrations on Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and the violence on Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
6. SIPGBO_220429_032.JPG: PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA Darkroom Mirror (0X5A0752) Inkjet print, 2019 Collection of the artist, courtesy of DOCUMENT, Chicago, and Vielmetter Los Angeles Paul Mpagi Sepuya engages in the possibilities of picture making with mirrors and photography. In Darkroom Mirror (0X5A0752), the glass surface is a pictorial tool, reflecting two intertwined bodies in the studio. The mirror’s smudges appear as smoke like areas in the otherwise sharp composition. The artist has said that he is “interested in Blackness, and thinking about it materially and visually for what it produces in images, and how it’s inseparable from the production of photographs.” This scene, that of two embracing Black men, one averting our gaze and the other with his face hidden behind the camera, raises questions about visibility and anonymity. Sepuya renders the figures—and all that they may stand for, including queerness and Blackness—both visible and not.
7. SIPGBO_220429_038.JPG: DAVID HILLIARD Dad, at Manmade Pond Inkjet prints, 2020 Collection of the artist For decades, David Hilliard and his father, Raymond, collaborated on The Dad Series. The pair had even made plans for what the last image would be, and Raymond had given his son permission to photograph him in his casket. COVID-19 restrictions, however, meant that when Raymond died of the virus in April 2020, he was cremated rather than embalmed. Hilliard, then, placed his father’s cremains in a casket-shaped urn and made images in spaces that had been meaningful to his father. Dad, at Manmade Pond is particularly poignant for Hilliard, as it depicts where his father taught him and his brother to swim, canoe, and fish. In the center of the triptych, the urn rests on a small table as lily pads float atop the delicately rippling water. Alluding to Raymond’s love of nature, this conceptual portrait conveys the closeness felt between father and son at a time when traditional forms of mourning were brought to a standstill.
8. SIPGBO_220429_046.JPG: ROBERT SCHEFMAN In Love with My Best Friend Oil on canvas, 2019 Collection of Michael Farrell and Marc Herrick The artist Robert Schefman relied on social media to solicit subject matter for “The Secrets Project.” After asking people to disclose “one personal secret,” he received hundreds of responses with specific stories and common themes of love, loss, and yearning. Respondents were not only enthusiastic about the call but also expressed their sense of relief in divulging their closely protected feelings and thoughts. In Love with My Best Friend, which explores the experience of revealing one’s most guarded secrets with a stranger, is a composite of different stories shared with Schefman. The painting considers the cathartic effects of these private, anonymous exchanges and represents the letter writers with this single figure. Letters, postcards, toys, and bouquets of roses allude to the unrequited relationships.
9. SIPGBO_220429_059.JPG: STUART ROBERTSON Commended Self-Portrait of the Artist Aluminum, earth, acrylic paint, enamel, paper, metallic bubble wrap, sequins, and gold foil on wood, 2020 Collection of Deborah Beckmann Kotzubei “In my world, skin is high-tech, amorphous, and armored,” the artist Stuart Robertson observes. “Blackness is percussive, lustrous, flexible, and indestructible.” Self-Portrait of the Artist depicts a fragment of a man—half of his face and his upper torso—shiny and monumental. A black beard delineates his jaw, and a small gold hoop adorns his ear. Although the figure is cropped beyond recognition, the work’s title provides a clue. Through the alternation of flat and repoussé aluminum sheets, Robertson achieves a hypnotic effect, a poignant tension playing on what he reveals or hides from us viewers. His refusal to depict his entire face or figure challenges the notion of what a portrait should be and blocks the objectification of the Black male body, so often sexualized in visual culture. Simultaneously, Robertson delivers an irrepressible, resplendent image of that body, one inspired by the aesthetics of Jamaica’s dancehall culture.
10. SIPGBO_220429_063.JPG: JAROD LEW Gracie Inkjet print, 2019 (printed 2021) Collection of the artist Jarod Lew started exploring what he calls “the contradictions inherent to constructions of Asian American identity” upon learning that his mother had once been engaged to Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was killed in an anti-Asian hate crime in Michigan, in 1982. Here, Lew presents Gracie, a Korean adoptee, sitting in the dining room of an American suburban home. With her tattooed arms raised over her head, a beauty mask covering her face, and a Homer Simpson T-shirt, Gracie and her surroundings suggest the intermingling of generations and cultures. The mid-century modern hutch holds carefully placed tableware, as well as a maneki-neko (lucky cat) and a matryoshka doll. These objects, along with the head of a dummy and other knick-knacks, contrast with Gracie’s own presentation. Together, the multiple cultural backgrounds represented in this scene make clear the complexity of Asian American identity.
11. SIPGBO_220429_071.JPG: DONNA CASTELLANOS Bertha, I’d like to know where you got the notion Fabric, zippers, pin cushions, snaps, paper packaging, knitting needles, and other sewing notions, 2020 Collection of the artist Donna Castellanos creates artworks using found objects that have been appreciated, things with history. Bertha, I’d like to know where you got the notion is a portrait of her grandmother, who was born in a small town in Missouri in 1917. When Bertha was young, she worked at a sewing factory installing zippers. The love of textiles and needlecraft has passed down through the generations, to the artist’s mother and aunts, and to Castellanos, who collectively stitched this homage. Made entirely with zippers, pins, threads, buttons, knitting needles, and other “sewing notions” that the artist fastened onto fabric, this portrait plays with the idea of a coquette elderly woman who possesses her own notions or inclinations. While portrayed in a home interior, Bertha is anything but domesticated or passive. With silver swirling curls, breasts made of pin cushions, and a lit cigarette resting in an ashtray, she stands assertively, accompanied by her cat.
12. SIPGBO_220429_087.JPG: GUSTAVE BLACHE III Travis (After the Fall) Oil on wood, 31.8 x 53.3 cm (12 x 21 in.), 2019 Collection of the artist This small painting, with its mostly bare background, directs one’s attention to the body of a fallen man. Although the space is not clearly delineated, there are just enough brushstrokes to depict the uneven surface of dirt on the ground. The man looks upward, having lost his helmet, and we catch a glimpse of his striped black-and-white shirt. With a striking economy of paint, Travis (After the Fall) presents Gustave Blache’s view of the “Angola” Louisiana State Penitentiary Rodeo. Held five times a year at the maximum-security prison, the event serves as entertainment for thousands of the general public, who pay to watch as “volunteer inmates” compete for awards. Blache’s work raises questions about spectatorship within an unusual venue, one where the performers, such as Travis, have been removed from society but are nonetheless a popular attraction.
13. SIPGBO_220429_092.JPG: NARSISO MARTINEZ Cherry Ink, gouache, charcoal, metallic paint, and other media, 2020 Collection of Andrew Stearn On a flattened produce box, Narsiso Martinez’s Cherry depicts a farmworker harvesting fruit. The commercial design and mechanically imprinted red plump cherries contrast with the hand-drawn weathered face of the worker, framed by their own hands. Clad with a bandana over their nose and a baseball cap and hoodie to withstand the inclement weather, the worker remains anonymous, identified only by the serial number branding their left hand. The name of the harvest in French and English underlines the necessity of their work across borders. By choosing to portray farmworkers on produce boxes, Martinez equates the brownness of the cardboard and its fragility to the at-once vulnerable and indispensable immigrant field worker. Martinez came to the United States as an adult to pursue higher education and paid his tuition through agricultural work. He also draws attention to the nameless workers classified as “essential” by the federal government—those who kept our supermarkets stocked and helped prevent the agricultural industry from collapsing during the height of the pandemic.
14. SIPGBO_220429_097.JPG: RIVA LEHRER Risk Picture: Achy Obejas Charcoal, paper, thread, glass, fluorite, wire, and other media, 2020 Lent by the artist and Zolla Lieberman Gallery Riva Lehrer’s portraits focus on the disability community of which she is a part. Long concerned with what she calls “the ethics of the studio relationship,” her portrayals of others are collaborative. Lehrer made this drawing of her friend, the writer Achy Obejas, as she was beginning to experience deafness. Signaling Obejas’s emergent loss, fragments of text emanate from an ear-shaped aperture. The stream of messages, written in English and Spanish, relate to her vividly documented erotic life. The torn pieces of paper are seen floating into a lower register, where, from the sea, we spot a shore. The accompanying vitrine contains rolled scrolls and a figure in a glass boat, symbolizing Obejas’s identity as a Cuban exile.
15. SIPGBO_220429_116.JPG: KIRA NAM GREENE Kyung’s Gift in Pojagi Oil, gouache, colored pencil, and acrylic ink on canvas, 2019 Courtesy of Contemporary Art Matters In this mixed-media work, by Kira Nam Greene, the artist Kyung Jeon faces us with relaxed self-assurance. She is carefully positioned on her couch as her long black hair falls over her orange and turquoise tunic. In the foreground, a wooden cylinder containing paint brushes reveals her medium of choice. A plate with persimmons, consumed during the harvest festival Chuseok to celebrate good fortune, brims with potential while the rest of the painting pulsates with action. Greene situates her friend in a fantasy world that echoes Jeon’s artwork and their mutual interest in the traditional Korean fabric quilting technique of pojagi. Two rabbits, representing Jeon’s Chinese zodiac, appear to be concocting a potion. Flowers sprout as kaleidoscopic patterns envelop her. The reference to pojagi, the visible paint drips in the background painting, and the hands of the sitter—left unfinished—invoke the role of tradition, process, and exploration in artmaking.
16. SIPGBO_220429_121.JPG: CLARISSA BONET Glimpse Inkjet print, 2019 Collection of the artist, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago The discovery of a figure amongst a grid of windows and vertical blinds conjures the disorienting situation of coming upon an unknown face peeking through a window. With that chance encounter comes the recognition that one is being watched, possibly even surveilled. Glimpse is part of a series that explores urban life, specifically the relationship between private and public spaces and the daily experiences of those traversing these areas, including those of the artist. Though made before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, for Clarissa Bonet, this photograph brings to mind the recent state of being “isolated from the public spaces we all used to enjoy freely.” The unidentified woman may be looking onto an unknown subject left out of the composition, or onto nothing at all.
17. SIPGBO_220429_132.JPG: TIMOTHY LEE A portrait of the comet boy as a bearer of memories Silk, heat-transfer ink, gold leaf, and oil on canvas, 2019 Collection of the artist In his practice, Timothy Lee investigates his struggles with anxiety, which he feels stem from his Asian American, queer, immigrant, and diasporic identities. Yet, while drawing from his personal narratives more broadly, Lee also attends to the disquieting complexities that are intrinsic to growing up as part of two cultures. The ironic figure of the “comet boy,” visualized here as if emerging from a halo, is both an embrace of and a departure from the artist’s past. The dynamic interplay of light, shadow, and texture evince the layered nature of Lee’s inquiry. A keen attention to materials and precision, as evidenced by the incised cuts throughout much of the work’s surface, allude to the artist’s earlier scientific training. Snapshots of the artist’s childhood in South Korea emblazon the comet boy’s body. Memories, and with them the past, become part of the flesh, like tattoos.
18. SIPGBO_220429_143.JPG: FRANK BLAZQUEZ The Gallegos Twins from Belen, NM Inkjet print, 2019 Collection of the artist Having developed a chemical dependency in Chicago, Frank Blazquez moved to New Mexico in 2010 with the hope of starting anew. Yet, within a short time, he returned to drug use and became a participant in Albuquerque’s narcotics trade. Resolved to rehabilitate himself, he returned to college and began this series of photographs. New Mexicans soon started reaching out to him, asking that he make their portraits and tell their stories. Here, Bunny (left) and Aubrey (right) Gallegos, of Belen, New Mexico, stand near Rio Communities Boulevard. “Proud to use the term Chicana, they say it is equally important to use the label New Mexican,” Blazquez said. Bunny and Aubrey, like many in the state, are proud of their New Mexican heritage and can trace their roots back to 1706, when King Philip II of Spain granted colonists permission to settle Albuquerque.
19. SIPGBO_220429_148.JPG: GRADE SOLOMON Shana, December 19 Inkjet print, 2020 Collection of the artist Days before he was set to embark on a road trip, in December 2020, the photographer Grade Solomon had a chance encounter with Shana, the subject of this portrait. Solomon described his wishes to come to terms with the unknown, and Shana asked if she could join him. At a moment when anti-Asian hate was on the rise, the two discussed their lives as biracial Asians and connected on a personal level. “Her piercing gaze is not at the lens, but at me,” according to Solomon. Attentive to the interplay of light, shadow, and color, he photographed Shana in the early evening, on Interstate 30, between New Boston and Dalby Springs, in Texas. They were three days into their journey, one that has had a lasting impact on both of them. This photograph now remains as a memento of their time on the road, providing a view into their past selves.
20. SIPGBO_220429_165.JPG: JESS T. DUGAN Shira and Sarah Inkjet print, 2020 Collection of the artist In photographs from their ongoing series “Every Breath We Drew,” Jess T. Dugan has explored the importance and power of connection, desire, and identity through the framework of queer experience. Connection is especially palpable in Shira and Sarah’s tender embrace. Sarah holds Shira, who, in turn, grasps Sarah’s wrist, and the two almost appear as a single figure. A third face, one of Sarah’s best friends, is tattooed on her arm with the words, “fortis et hospitalis” (strength and hospitality), alluding to Sarah’s own biography. Their proximity is particularly poignant considering they are posed in stark contrast to the recommended physical distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the setting for the photograph, outdoors on a St. Louis rooftop, with the Mississippi River in the background, was a response to social distancing, Dugan’s decision to venture outside their studio reinforces the artist’s broader project.
21. SIPGBO_220429_170.JPG: MELISSA ANN PINNEY Portrait of Jael Inkjet print, 2019 Collection of the artist Throughout her career, Melissa Ann Pinney has observed the transitions from childhood to adulthood, especially those of young women. In 2018, she started documenting the culture and life unique to Chicago Public Schools. Pinney met Jael, the subject of this portrait, at Chicago’s Ogden International School’s west campus. “The students collaborate in the work by allowing me into their fierce and fragile world,” the photographer observes. Set in one of the school’s restrooms, the image grants insight into what Pinney calls that “liminal space between public and private.” Jael’s pose is reflected in the mirror, drawing attention to our understanding of identity. The photograph’s play of mirrors also invites those coming before it to consider their own identities and how they perceive others.
22. SIPGBO_220429_175.JPG: MARIANNA T. OLAGUE Customer Service Representative Oil on canvas, 2020 Collection of the artist Despite their central role in business, or perhaps because of their ubiquity, those behind the register are often rendered invisible. This portrait, by Marianna T. Olague, focuses attention on the people who work in customer service. The painting’s scale, perspective, and saturated colors provide an encounter for the viewer that is akin to feeling like they are next in line. Olague’s practice has focused on the lives of her family and friends living along the Mexico-U.S. border in El Paso, Texas. Although the border is not depicted, it has defined much of their lives, and its impact is palpable through the objects and signs that surround this woman, Olague’s youngest sister. Baby formula and cigarettes remain guarded, emblematic of their frequent purchase and need to be monitored. The worker, meanwhile, sits somewhere between “daydreaming and disappointment,” as the mainly “cash only” transactions transpire under her watch.
23. SIPGBO_220429_178.JPG: NGA GUZYTE Cutting Edge Wood and used skateboards, 2020 Collection of the artist Inga Guzyte recycles old skateboards, sawing and reassembling them into new sculptural configurations. Cutting Edge, a portrait of Alison Saar, is from Guzyte’s series “Kindred Spirits,” which honors women who have made their mark in the art world. The ethos of bravery and independence that is part of skateboard culture conveys the tenacity and perseverance of Guzyte’s role models. Aptly made from reclaimed wood, a recurrent material in Saar’s sculptures and installations, this portrait stands between painting and sculpture. Saar’s expression evokes her fierceness and commitment to her practice. Her headdress points to her Afro-diasporic background, while its dynamic red and orange twists suggest her fiery creative energy. Like a flame, the headwrap attracts a multitude of moths, which recur in Saar’s work to signify a go-between for the real world and the spiritual world.
24. SIPGBO_220429_183.JPG: MAIA CRUZ PALILEO Wild Flowers Oil on canvas, 2019 Collection of Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger In between the earth and the sea, where trees and tropical flowers break through the turquoise waters, an intergenerational group of women emerges. In contrast to the other figures, the woman on the right looks spectral, her face being the only one seemingly lit with nocturnal light. Maia Cruz Palileo explores their Filipino American identity in improvised paintings that evoke what they call “the permeable concept of home.” Inspired by personal and institutional photographic archives and by stories recounted by their family, Palileo’s artworks speak to the history of colonization, migration, and assimilation, and to the resilience of Filipinos in relation to the United States. Rather than passive, the subjects in their work have agency. The kind but blurry faces of the figures in Wild Flowers, along with the uncertain space they occupy, bring to mind the act of remembering and piecing together one’s past.
25. SIPGBO_220429_187.JPG: KEEGAN HOLDEN Firefly Inkjet print, 2019 Collection of the artist For Keegan Holden, the act of photographing an unknown person sparks a “shared moment of reflection, observation, and introspection” between him and the person on the other side of the camera. As he set up his equipment along the palm tree lined Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles, where he once taught skateboarding lessons, Holden asked Firefly, a skateboarder and performer, to consider how she felt at that moment in her life. In response, she stared intently at Holden and his camera, engaging with him and the viewer. Holden’s composition, with Firefly in the foreground and the blurred background, emphasizes the determination and daring she projects in her gaze and pose. For Holden, portraits are not only about who is depicted. Rather, he likens them to mirrors that provide a place for viewers to recognize their “emotions and vulnerabilities.”
26. SIPGBO_220429_203.JPG: TOM JONES Second Prize Elizah Leonard Inkjet print with beads, rhinestones, and shells, 2019 IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; museum purchase, 2020 Tom Jones, who grew up in the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, focuses on Native American present and future while acknowledging how they can coexist with the past. In this multilayered portrait, he introduces us to Elizah Leonard, a champion dancer and recipient of an All-American Scholarship for wrestling. Jones photographed Leonard wearing a Fancy Dance shawl, made by her mother, and a beaded necklace and earrings, made by her grandfather. He then sewed beads, rhinestones, and shells directly onto the print. Based on Ho-Chunk designs, the white beadwork references a scene the artist experienced during visits to a Sioux medicine man on the Rosebud reservation. Jones remembers being in a darkened room and seeing small lights appear as voices called out for their ancestors. Through the beads and the light that they reflect, Jones surrounds Leonard with an allusion to these spirits and to her intergenerational story.
27. SIPGBO_220429_207.JPG: ELSA MAR�A MEL�NDEZ Commended Milk Canvas with silkscreen, embroidery, ink, and other textiles, 2020 Collection of the artist Elsa María Meléndez routinely crosses the boundaries between artistic mediums in large-scale artworks that command space and attention. Combining silkscreen, drawing, and various needlework techniques, Milk portrays the artist charging forward, determined. She carries a limp bull and advances while her breasts drip glistening drops of milk. Created six months into the COVID-19 lockdown, this artwork encapsulates Meléndez’s reflection on the fight for gender equality in Puerto Rico. As people went into quarantine, gender violence escalated around the world. In Puerto Rico, where femicides increased substantially, feminist organizations took to the streets, demanding that the government declare a state of emergency. They received the scorn of substantial sectors of society, across gender lines. In response, Meléndez created Milk, an icon of indomitability that recognizes the strength of women and their life-sustaining force while acknowledging their willingness to nurse the beast that sustains patriarchy.
28. SIPGBO_220429_214.JPG: TIM LOWLY 2020 (Temma with her father and her Aunt Amy’s quilt) Graphite on board, 2020 Collection of Jackye and Curtis Finch Jr. How much of the world do we know through our sight? What do our eyes perceive or signal in our simplest interactions with one another and our surroundings? These are some of the questions elicited by this quiet graphite drawing. Both a self-portrait of the artist and a portrait of his daughter, the image shows the intimacy between a caregiving dad and his child, Temma, who has cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia. Set in Temma’s bedroom, Lowly sits in the foreground with his eyes closed, not meeting the viewer’s gaze and therefore complicating our expectation of a “self-portrait.” Behind him, Temma lies in bed. Lowly writes: “While Temma’s open eyes don’t see in a conventional sense (she is cortically blind), they do often indicate an attentive, utterly innocent presence.” In the background, the watercolor quilt by Temma’s Aunt Amy, rendered without color, suggests the limits of seeing.
29. SIPGBO_220429_219.JPG: MICHELLE ELZAY Essex Boston & Family 1 Dye transfer prints, 2019–20 Collection of the artist Michelle Elzay’s careful arrangements of cups, pipes, and shoes recall an archaeologist’s reunification and examination of ancient discoveries. Many of the items presented here were recovered starting in 2015 through salvage archaeology at a nineteenth-century trash pit on a property that once belonged to Essex Boston (1741–1827), in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Born enslaved, Boston became a businessperson and property owner after his manumission at age eighteen. Despite the family’s contemporaneous influence, Boston’s history was largely forgotten. In Elzay’s work, the objects once touched, used, and then discarded, are sometimes paired with contemporary ones, such as the beef shank, at top center, which has been set beside a shank bone found at the pit. Together, the historical objects and those that reflect Elzay’s extensive research hint at the Boston family’s and its community’s customs, likes, and socioeconomic roles.
30. SIPGBO_220429_228.JPG: TR ERICSSON Bride Nicotine on gessoed wood, 2019 Private collection Sepia tones emerge from an expanse of white and beige, forming the image of a young woman holding flowers under her chin. Bride is both a portrait of the artist’s mother and part of his long-term effort to better understand her by telling her story. TR Ericsson began the project after his mom, Susan, died by suicide in 2003, at the age of fifty-seven. Upon finding a wedding portrait of his mother in a family album, Ericsson photographed the black-and-white print and made an enlarged silkscreen of the 1960s image. He then burned dozens of cigarettes beneath the screen. What remains are the nicotine stains that were caused by smoke as it passed through the screen and onto the gessoed panel. In resorting to nicotine as a medium, Ericsson alludes to his mother’s smoking habit and the stains that she left behind in their home and in other spaces she inhabited.
31. SIPGBO_220429_243.JPG: ILENE SPIEWAK Deeper into the Isolation of Self Information and Gender Acrylic paint and charcoal on canvas, 2020 Collection of the artist For over fifty years, Ilene Spiewak has focused on the relations between color and visual space, painting at the edge of representation and abstraction. The introspection and solitude brought by the pandemic made her compositions more sparse and her palette more restrained. “I realized what I had in my studio was myself always. . . . I began to insert myself in my paintings more than I was conscious of in the past.” In this self-portrait, Spiewak outlines her silhouette in charcoal. Her face and nude torso are rendered in soft shades of white, pink, and gray that push against the yellow background. With frankness, she paints her aging body, countering centuries of idealized, youthful, slender female nudes in art. By placing her figure off-center on the picture plane, with her right arm extended but truncated, Spiewak subtly allows us into the intimate act of observing and painting herself.
32. SIPGBO_220429_246.JPG: KH�NH H. L� She Waited for Her Family from This Point in Place Acrylic paint, paper, and plastic jewels on canvas, 2021 Collection of the artist This work, by Khánh H. Lê, comes across as joyful. A smiling woman stands along a shimmering shore and bright green shrubbery. Her umbrella is likely there to block the bright sun in the sky. Lê’s work, however, is suffused with tension, in both its materiality and the source of its composition. The plastic jewels sparkle as if real, emphasizing the scene’s idyllic nature and belying the traumas of exile. Here, Lê depicts his grandmother, who was separated from Lê and the rest of their family on multiple occasions after the Vietnam War. Working from images found in family albums, digital photographs, and fashion and decoration magazines, Lê explores his family’s experiences as refugees from Vietnam as they sought safety.
33. SIPGBO_220429_260.JPG: RANIA MATAR Minty, Kayla, Leyah, and Layla, Cambridge, Massachusetts Inkjet print, 2020 Collection of the artist, courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery, Boston Exhaustion and perseverance suffuse Rania Matar’s portrait Minty, Kayla, Leyah, and Layla, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shortly after the pandemic lockdown started in Boston, Matar put out a call on social media, asking if anyone would like to be photographed at their window. Over one hundred people answered, and she made her way around the greater Boston area to document the impact of the pandemic on those living under the same roof. Minty, Kayla, Leyah, and Layla posed for Matar in April 2020, all sharing a space behind a green window frame. Three of the four figures engage directly with Matar and her camera, while one young girl on the right stares into the distance from behind the closed window. Their poses unwittingly disclose the impact of the pandemic on different generations, evoking tedium and frustration as well as intimacy.
34. SIPGBO_220429_265.JPG: NGA GUZYTE Cutting Edge Wood and used skateboards, 2020 Collection of the artist Inga Guzyte recycles old skateboards, sawing and reassembling them into new sculptural configurations. Cutting Edge, a portrait of Alison Saar, is from Guzyte’s series “Kindred Spirits,” which honors women who have made their mark in the art world. The ethos of bravery and independence that is part of skateboard culture conveys the tenacity and perseverance of Guzyte’s role models. Aptly made from reclaimed wood, a recurrent material in Saar’s sculptures and installations, this portrait stands between painting and sculpture. Saar’s expression evokes her fierceness and commitment to her practice. Her headdress points to her Afro-diasporic background, while its dynamic red and orange twists suggest her fiery creative energy. Like a flame, the headwrap attracts a multitude of moths, which recur in Saar’s work to signify a go-between for the real world and the spiritual world.
35. SIPGBO_220429_279.JPG: RIGOBERTO A. GONZALEZ Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas Oil on linen, 2020 Varmar Private Collection Despite the ever-present news stories about the Mexico-U.S. border, as Rigoberto Gonzalez contends, the region itself remains nebulous. It feels like a space that is transnational, one that is both inclusive and exclusionary. This painting monumentalizes the very act of crossing this threshold with its allusions to seventeenth-century Baroque art. Each figure emerges out of darkness, light accentuating their worried expressions. Their arms and hands touch, forming an almost continuous line from mother to older child, connecting the group. The mother holds a rosary while carrying a diaper-clad child and tenuously grips the edge of a ladder that leans against the looming steel fence. And just below this ladder, at the bottom left, a medical mask and a newspaper provide temporal specificity to this often repeated, perilous scene.
36. SIPGBO_220429_289.JPG: JOEL DANIEL PHILLIPS WITH QURAYSH ALI LANSANA Commended Killed Negative #13 / After Arthur Rothstein Charcoal, graphite, and ink on paper, 2020 Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody Drawing from the vast photographic archive of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), held by the Library of Congress, the artist Joel Daniel Phillips and the writer Quraysh Ali Lansana bring forward images, such as this, that were never meant to be seen. Roy Stryker, director of the FSA’s Historical Section in the 1930s, sent photographers across the country to document the Great Depression’s hardships. He also determined which images could and could not circulate, preventing many from appearing in print by hole-punching (what the FSA termed, “killing”) their negatives. With tight control, Stryker crafted the period’s visual legacy and its history. In response to Arthur Rothstein’s “killed” negative, Phillips and Lansana have rendered an anonymous resident of Eighty Acres in Glassboro, New Jersey, larger than life while expanding our understanding of life during the Great Depression. hospitality Quraysh Ali Lansana Poem (in response to Killed Negative #13 / After Arthur Rothstein)
37. SIPGBO_220429_304.JPG: KH�NH H. L� She Waited for Her Family from This Point in Place Acrylic paint, paper, and plastic jewels on canvas, 2021 Collection of the artist This work, by Khánh H. Lê, comes across as joyful. A smiling woman stands along a shimmering shore and bright green shrubbery. Her umbrella is likely there to block the bright sun in the sky. Lê’s work, however, is suffused with tension, in both its materiality and the source of its composition. The plastic jewels sparkle as if real, emphasizing the scene’s idyllic nature and belying the traumas of exile. Here, Lê depicts his grandmother, who was separated from Lê and the rest of their family on multiple occasions after the Vietnam War. Working from images found in family albums, digital photographs, and fashion and decoration magazines, Lê explores his family’s experiences as refugees from Vietnam as they sought safety.
38. SIPGBO_220429_309.JPG: LAURA KARETZKY Toast Oil on wood, 2019 Collection of the artist With this large-scale painting, Laura Karetzky magnifies the role of technology in personal relationships. Her reflection appears in the metal toaster during a gathering to celebrate Hanukkah. Standing in a kitchen, near the yellow glow of the menorah, Karetzky can be seen trying to capture the instant while friends compose images of their own. Their gazes are, for the most part, focused on their phones. As individuals rely more and more on screen-based technology to bring them together, Karetzky notes that she is interested in “the experience of being in the same room and yet not.” This tension between real-life encounters and the proliferation of photographic images is something Toast addresses, not only through subject matter but also through materials. Karetzky treats her canvas with drips and distortions, creating a work that is textural and tactile, one that evokes the original moment.
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Wikipedia Description: National Portrait Gallery (United States)
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Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition

In 2006, the museum began hosting a triennial, juried contemporary portrait exhibition called the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Named after long time docent and volunteer Virginia Outwin Boochever, this competition is widely regarded as the most prestigious portrait competition in the United States. Artists working in the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and other media are allowed to enter. Works must be created through a face-to-face encounter with the subject. The inaugural competition in 2006 drew more than 4000 entries, from which 51 finalists were chosen. For the 2013 competition the total prize money of $42,000 was awarded to the top eight commended artists, and the winner received $25,000 and a commission to make a portrait for the museum’s permanent collection. The subject of the commission is decided jointly by the artist and the NPG curators. The 2006 winner was David Lenz of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of Special Olympics. It was the first portrait commissioned of an individual who has not served as a President or First Lady. The 2009 winner, Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, was commissioned to photograph food pioneer Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse Restaurant and Cafe, the Edible Schoolyard and champion of the Slow Food movement. The 2013 winner was Bo Gehring of Beacon, New York, who was commissioned to direct a video portrait of jazz musician Esperanza Spalding.
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