Brid Higgins Exhibition

With this project, I have been exploring the idea of the “collective portrait”. I am interested in how portraits represent the presence of people at a particular time and place; how portraits confer importance on a person; and in the way a portrait of a group commits that collection of people to the moment they were bound to one another for posterity. 

My project of residents of the Dean Arts Studios has been an opportunity for me to paint writers, musicians, dancers, and theatre practitioners from life.  During each sitting I have developed a dialogue with the subject which informs the portrait; the final collection of paintings will ultimately reveal the dialogue between each of these individuals and the power of their collective energy.

I think this collective is a real tribute to The Dean Arts Studios and I think that this inaugural group is an important one. Some of the artists will progress their careers beyond DAS and some of them might not, but this year, we were all working together under one roof.