Arti[face]:  

A Wink And A Nod Can Mean So Much

 

A Photorealistic Exposé on

Artifice in Portraiture

 

 

 

About this Collection:

The word “artifice” is often defined using words such as “cunning; ingenuity; trickery; artful contrivance; guile; craftiness.” This series of paintings aims to examine the cunning, ingenuity, trickery, artful contrivance, guile and craftiness involved in the art of the face.  Arti[face]. Focusing on only four blank-slate toy models, the artist’s goal is to animate and create a multitude of unique subtle narratives and moods using only the most basic tools and conventions of portraiture such as lighting, framing and juxtaposition.

 

Why Jane Duncan is an artist to watch:

Jane Duncan is a curiosity of the photorealist canon.  It is her focus on invention and narrative that sets her apart.

In her current series she explores the theme of the artificial, constructed nature of figurative artwork through the use of prefabricated inanimate dolls in the place of real people as subjects. Additionally, Duncan makes a point of titling her painted works as Untitled Film Stills to emphasize the layers of artifice involved in the creation of a portrait or visual representation of a character in a narrative.

 Press Quote: Globe and Mail, April 14, 2012

"Duncan’s post-photorealism paintings re-invigorate the dead genre by supplanting earnestness with playfulness and exacting, prissy sheens with hot-as-molten-steel colours." - R.M. Vaughan, Visual Arts Columnist for Globe and Mail

 

“I believe that there is huge room for exploration and growth in the genre of photorealistic painting.” – J. Duncan

 

“My goal is to inject life into these four dolls in order to create haunting tensions and pregnant moments making the figures seem ready to leap from the canvas. In this way I feel like a Geppetto or a Dr. Frankenstien. Most photorealist take an image of something that is real and replicate it as real. I am taking something that is not real and making it real.” 

-J. Duncan