August
8,2002 thru September 7, 2002
Closing reception and
Gallery talk,
Saturday, September 7th 2-4 (first Saturday)
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sfoo-mä-to ,a,[Italian ],having vague
outlines,and colors and shades so mingled as to give a misty
appearance
THE SFUMATO PORTRAITS From
a review by Peter Ireland, Wanganui,New Zealand
The post-Renaissance tradition of the
portrait representing, as it does, a faith that the head can stand for
the whole and even convey the essence of a person, assumes the
convention of chiaroscuro, the effects of light and shade that define
the features and three-dimensionality of physiognomy. This convention
typically assumes that the principal features will be, literally,
highlighted, with the secondary features in degrees of shadow, and so,
the light source must generally be at a 45-degree angle to the full
face. The sfumato portraits, by contrast, have the light source coming
in at the back of the head, producing the strange effect whereby it is
the principal features that are in shadow and the secondary features
highlighted. And such is the intensity of this light that in most of
these portraits the outer limits of the heads have disappeared, so that
the unframed features float disturbingly in a suggestive and
destabilized space.
Click here to see more
portraits
Click
here to read a profile of Krause in The Austin American Statesman
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