PORTRAITS STATEMENT: JAMES WHITINGTON

 

Expressionist painters like Edward Munch and Oscar Kokoschka brought expressive qualities to portraiture that made it reveal the person behind the mask. In more recent times Chuck Close, a neo expressionist in America, made large scale portraiture significant.

Like Chuck Close, my human portraits are influenced by my printmaking, not digital printing, but particularly the process of monoprint. They are acrylic on canvas 150x100 cm.

In my large portraits I’ve strived to convey personality and mood using the spontaneity of mono printing as the foundation of the paintings, focused on memories of characters from my life in inner city Sydney. I convey the life force and individuality of the subject’s engagement with existence without a mask of confidence, recognising – weariness, wariness, resilience, annihilation, disorientation, determination, forbearance, pride or sorrow – what’s going on inside.