A gallery wall is painted in vertical blocks of pale yellow, pale green, acid green, pale pink and baby blue providing the backdrop for a series of portraits with antique style wooden frames. The portraits rest at various heights and proximities; some are hung against just one colour while others sit on the border where two blocks meet. Each block of colour is reflected in the adjacent portrait’s colouration.
A gallery wall is painted in vertical blocks of pale pink, baby blue, eggshell blue, and pale yellow providing the backdrop for a series of portraits with antique style wooden frames. The portraits rest at various heights and proximities; some are hung against just one colour while others sit on the border where two blocks meet. Each block of colour is reflected in the adjacent portrait’s colouration.
Five painted portraits with muted tones begin to pop against the pale green and acid green wall panels. As the blocks of colour are reflected faintly in each portrait’s colouration, a tonal theme begins to thread the disparate images together.
Three portraits are hung between acid green and pale pink wall panels. The green eyes of a pencil sketched man and the rosy cheeks of two pale skinned figures tone with the painted blocks of colour.
Two portraits are hung between pale pink and baby blue wall panels. The rosy skin of a young girl in one portrait tones with roses in the neighboring figure’s hat. The open blue sky stretching out above the child resonates with the rich silky fabric of the adult’s clothing.
A gallery wall is painted in vertical blocks of pale pink, baby blue, eggshell blue, and pale yellow providing the backdrop for a series of portraits with antique style wooden frames. The portraits rest at various heights and proximities; some are hung against just one colour while others sit on the border where two blocks meet. Each block of colour is reflected in the adjacent portrait’s colouration.
A gallery wall is painted in vertical blocks of baby blue, eggshell blue, pale yellow, light fuchsia and dusty yellow providing the backdrop for a series of portraits with antique style wooden frames. The portraits rest at various heights and proximities; some are hung against just one colour while others sit on the border where two blocks meet. Each block of colour is reflected in the adjacent portrait’s colouration.
Five painted portraits with washed out tones begin to pop against the pale yellow and light fuchsia wall panels. As the blocks of colour are reflected faintly in each portrait’s colouration, a tonal theme begins to thread the disparate images together.
Five painted portraits with washed out tones begin to resonate against the light fuchsia and dust yellow wall panels. The sunset sky behind a sailor tones with a businessman’s suit and a yellow satin dress echoes the yellowing skin of an elderly nun.
A gallery wall is painted in vertical blocks of dusty blue, wheaty yellow, pale green, acid green and light pink providing the backdrop for a series of portraits with antique style wooden frames. The portraits rest at various heights and proximities; some are hung against just one colour while others sit on the border where two blocks meet. Each block of colour is reflected in the adjacent portrait’s colouration.
Nine portraits hang against dusty blue, wheaty yellow, and pale green wall panels. The grey blues of ageing men’s hair tone with silk garments and yellow and green undertones surface between various skin shades.
Six portraits hang against dusty blue and wheaty yellow wall panels. The grey blues of ageing men’s hair tone with silk garments and yellow and green undertones surface between various skin shades.

28 PORTRAITS (2024)

28 Portraits is my response for The Prop House: A Collection of One Million Objects. Co-curators Paul Wong and Lisa Baldissara asked me to participate, along with five other artists. Once I visited Mount Pleasant Furniture (MPF), a Vancouver prop house, I decided to work with all the painted portraits that I found in their holdings. There were 28. I made a floor-to-top-of-wall painting to contain them, matching to portrait colours. 

28 Portraits reminds me of Steve’s Vinyl (2011), where I painted floor-to-ceiling colour sections to match the dominant colours of the album covers, and also of About Face, where I gathered all the portraits at Union Theological Seminary (New York, 2012) and made an artist book / catalogue about them, while simultaneously removing and replacing them with painted rectangular silhouettes.

 

IN-DEPTH: Using a ‘system’ for selection, rather than judgement of quality,  the portraits were a jumble of styles and states of condition, with their dust, gashes and touch-ups underlining their life as props. Most were painted by trained painters and had a life as likenesses to individuals before they became anonymous props. Many featured late-19th to mid-20th century Western painting styles, including formulaic colonial conventions of dress and posing. Some appeared to be commemorative portraits, while others were anonymous composite characters - the Maritime fisher; a copy of the Laughing Cavalier (Frans Hals, 1624). As well, there were some portraits by folk artists and others by copyists. 

I could make out some signatures: Lemary; Doran; Nathalie Comte; V. A. (Victor Albert) Long; Nesta Bowen Horne. Nathalie Comte painted three of the portraits. Nesta Bowen Horne was born in Barbados in 1896, studied art in New York and Paris, immigrated to Vancouver in 1929, painted and showed in annual Vancouver Art Gallery exhibitions during the 1950s.

I found correspondences between pairs of portraits: those with oval mat boards; those with feathered hats; those in a landscape; those with graying beards; men with ties; poses of contemplation; dissatisfied expressions; executives in suits; sitters holding papers; young men in open white shirts; women wearing necklaces and earrings; the contrast of a young Queen Elizabeth II in white and an elderly and disappearing copy of Old Woman (Rembrandt). 

I began planning a floor-to-ceiling background or under-painting to connect and enliven the portraits, matching colours to details of the portraits colours. The resulting wall painting frames and makes colour connections between portraits, and projects the cohesiveness of a single artwork. 

During the exhibition, curator Catherine Clement saw the show and immediately identified a large portrait of a Chinese man in an armchair as Yucho Chow, the first Chinese photographer with a studio in Vancouver’s Chinatown (1907-49). Coincidentally, Griffin Art Projects had previously published Whose Chinatown? (c. 2021) which featured a biography and photographs by Chow. It was a success of 28 Portraits that this portrait went from unknown to commemorating a significant figure in Chinatown and Vancouver’s history.

Related Projects:
Steve's Vinyl
On Que in Pantone Colours of the Year
Acquired in 1964
About Face
Atrium
Related Readings / Media:
The Prop House Virtual Tour
Themes / Topics:
Collections / archives
Commemoration / remembering / memory / memorializing
Re-categorizing / re-ordering
Forms / Mediums:
Painting
Wall panels