Christine Comyn - Contemporary Figurative Artist

I attended an Art exhibition showing some of the work of Belgian artist Christine Comyn. Understanding that Christine is known as a contemporary figurative artist I thought it interesting to look at how an artist paints portraits given that Assignment 1 is based on portraits.

I've read that Christine started employment as a book illustrator but wanted to express her own creativity rather than working to briefs.

Working mainly in watercolours Christine has developed an expressive and free form style that has earned her plaudits all over the world and perhaps her world wide renown started when the global cosmetic giant L'Oreal commissioned her to produce a set of paintings for a new perfume range.

She had been approached in 1998 by the artistic director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders to execute a series of paintings inspired by ballet, where the artist was afforded the opportunity to study and sketch the dancers of the Royal Ballet during their practice sessions. The artistic synergy led to a much publicised exhibition of her work at the new theatre in Antwerp, and a special production, titled ‘Looking Through Glass’ by the Royal Ballet.

The images I saw demonstrated an amazing skill for capturing the poise and beauty of people, this is also demonstrated in much of her work that can be found by searching the internet, I have a attached a link here: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Christine+comyn+images&espv=2&biw=1530&bih=1046&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rk1aVLreLJLB7Aa34oDQBg&ved=0CCAQsAQ

When I look at her work I wonder that in her images how much of people she is capturing and how much she is creating. It is no doubt a combination of both but it led me to decide that she was capturing real life elements but expressing it in her own unique way. Whilst Stieglitz in his set of images of clouds, the Equivalents" looked to capture and express to the viewer the same feeling that he had when viewing them, looking at Comyn's work I can not help feeling that she has specifically captured emotion and feeling in her work that I can also feel.

With the express permission of the gallery attendant I was able take some images of these for me learning log. I'm not sure to what degree I have captured what I saw in the gallery but they act to save as reminded to me of what I saw and felt and importantly how portrait images can be expressed.

I'd like anyone viewing my blog to think what emotions these images invoke, feel free to log a comment....I rarely get comments but note a lot of people visit my log

Summary

Though I have neither the room / space or the finances, if I had I would have gladly purchased some of Comyn's work. The style and capture of personality and emotion in her paintings I found extremely skilled. 

This led me to the thought or perhaps the challenge of attempting to capture this in my portrait photography in the future, both subject aware and subject unaware