Oil on canvas.
36x36"
"Nia" is a captivating large-scale portrait of my decade long best friend. She is depicted as looking hopeful for the future, but that isn't the truth. Struggling with crippling depression stemming from her dysfunctional family and childhood sexual assault, she is unable to envision her life turning around. Telling women's stories of abuse has been important to my artistic career as someone who has experienced it first-hand. I have brought her to life by carefully studying the nuances in her expression, and the painting as a whole is brought to life by the gestural mark-making in the background, representing the darkness, the light, and the colour that radiates from her. To celebrate her identity as a black woman, I wanted to highlight her hair by using similar brushstrokes in the background, and having it stand out against her shirt which I left loose and unfinished. Her photorealistic, detailed face against the abstract, chaotic background is a way of exhibiting the power she has over the circumstances life brings her.
Isabelle Halmos is a 2021 graduate of Drawing and Painting from OCAD University, completing her Bachelor degree in Fine Arts in Toronto where she was born and raised. She is aiming to become a practicing visual artist, and eventually work as an art restorer and conservationist for private and public art collections.
Her attention to detail gained from years of photorealistic commissioned sketch work is apparent as she turns photographs and live subjects into drawings or paintings. Her current work focuses on issues of body and gender as well as sexual assault/harassment which she achieves through paintings and installation work. Her art is mostly figurative, combining her hyper-realism with abstract principles.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Isabelle Halmos is a portrait artist whose work focuses on the female experience, including serious issues such as sexual assault and harassment, yet she is able to celebrate women’s bodies through expressionistic colour and bold, playful compositions that tell a story. Captivated by bringing beautiful people and faces to life, she spends a considerable amount of time and detail on the nuances of facial features, then uses her love for abstraction and gestural, expressionistic lines to create bodies and backgrounds. By doing this, she is able to convey messages about the confusion women feel about the ownership of their own bodies.
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