Watercolor portraits by Austin Power. Power graduated from Parsons in 2008 and lives in NYC. His paintings are mysterious and magnetic and his artist statements, below, are some of the best I’ve read in a while.
I am interested in showing the difficulty and discomfort in fully understanding a person. I leave my subjects incomplete to highlight their limitations. As well as my own inability to see the subject beyond the influence of myself.
When I paint someone else, I paint what I know about them. I paint you plus myself, because that is my truth about identity. If I paint you hollow, but with volume, it is not because I think you are empty. It is instead that I think you are full of things I may never know about you. I paint incompleteness because I live incompleteness. I can never know for sure what happens when I’m not around. The purest limitation is time. I can only be responsible for the time that I spend with you. – Austin Power via phillips Art expert.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 lizzie // Jan 20, 2011 at 1:55 pm
wow…mysterious is definitely the right word, these are striking and beautiful…
2 Kate // Jan 21, 2011 at 10:03 am
i totally agree. what’s amazing is that even with just an eye or a mouth you get a sense for the person portrayed. i love that!
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