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Timely portraitsBrian Comber paintings on display at Carla Wright GalleryGene Davis, DDN Staff WriterWednesday, January 6, 2010 |  | | The work of local artist Brian Comber, including this piece, is showing at the Carla Wright Gallery. |
The intense meets the expressive at the new exhibit showing at the Carla Wright Gallery.
The collection features a series of 11 portraits by local artist Brian Comber, though the paintings are often more reminiscent of an intense vision in a frame than the “Mona Lisa.”
For the series, Comber was inspired by recent world events like the Iraq war and the internal strife that has gripped the country for the past several years. He was also drawn to the writings by Paul Eluard and the way the French poet, who died in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote beautiful, graphic poems about man’s inhumanity to man, yet still maintained a hope for the future.
“I wanted to do something visual that encompassed those ideas,” he said.
Comber decided to take those ideas and infuse them with a series of portraits of real life people, many of them children who live on his block in Five Points. But rather than take a “monkey see, monkey do” approach and paint a traditional representation of his subjects, he chose to distort the paintings in hopes of portraying the subjects’ hopes for the future, as well as his own conflicting world views.
The result is a series of 11 haunting paintings that have an intense energy unlike almost any other artwork in town. It’s hard not to get the feeling that the paintings are glaring back at the viewer, judging them just as they are being judged.
“What I’m hoping for is an interaction between the person and the painting,” Comber said. “The worse thing I could have happen is if someone walks by and doesn’t even notice it.”
Where: Carla Wright Gallery
When: Through Feb. 28
Information: CarlaWrightGallery.com
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