Existing comment:
This gallery presents portraits by artists Chuck Close, Nelson Shanks, and Jack Beal, whose work Ian and Annette Cumming fervently supported.
Chuck Close has been making large-scale portraits of friends, family, and others he admires for more than five decades. Employing a range of media (painting, photography, printmaking, and textiles), he brings fresh perspectives to portraiture. Close began collaborating with Donald Farnsworth of Magnolia Editions in 2003. Together, they have made tapestries, such as the three shown in this gallery, using imaging software and computerized fabrication techniques.
The art of Nelson Shanks conveys the emotions and inner lives of his prominent sitters. "We read more from human facial expressions and bodily gestures than probably any other subject in nature," he observed. In addition to the subjects presented here, Shanks painted portraits of several other luminaries, notably Pope John Paul II; Diana, Princess of Wales; and President Ronald Reagan.
Jack Beal made portraits, historical studies, and murals at a time when abstraction and conceptualism reigned. Working from life, he painted densely composed and dramatically lit images, which the critic Peter Schjeldahl notes, "makes his work so pressure-packed, so difficult, and so good." |