When I saw this painting by Regina Carbayo, a Spanish artist
who has been living and working for a number of years in Cork, my immediate (gut)
reaction was ‘wow’, and still is; undiminished.
The painting has a classic, timeless composition and palette.
The faces are Spanish, and, as other Spanish artists have been known to do, the
painting playfully cocks a snook at itself and the whole genre, through its
subjects’ exaggerated hauteur and feigned disdain.
Here they are, bound to classic portraiture by props that
would for long times past have suggested learning and aesthetic high-mindedness,
trapped in that age-old format, formally
posed and extremely self-conscious, faces melting downward as only the faces could be permitted to move within
the strict composition.
Those expressions draw you in to rich fun of the image, hold
your attention, and call you back to look again and again.
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