Why Hand-Crafted Portraits Are Vital Today

In this group of artists, intimacy, memory and abstraction intersect in different methods, however all share a sensitivity to the short lived: the overlooked image, the half-remembered place, the unsteady limit in between what we see and what we feel. Together, they form a quiet but insistent meditation on how meaning builds up in ordinary life.

Taken together, rendered in her distinctive painterly style, these retellings of easily-forgotten moments demonstrate how a regular life, when analyzed from a specific point of view, starts to radiate a palpable sense of significance.Rosemary Burn Bowl of cherries, 2025 Mona Sultan's photocollages explain the fragmentary nature of memory and meaning, calling photographic truth into concern by breaking down, recontextualising and duplicating images. Balancing systematic accuracy with a clearly human, necessarily imperfect visual perceptiveness, his paintings are lighthearted abstractions for the digital age.Luke Rudolf Fizzog 4, 2025 Jo Berry's airbrushed paintings offer physical kinds to images that we usually see through a screen andquickly forget, such as stock pictures and ReCAPTCHAs. To me, her distinct language hazy, distorted, subtly unsettling reflects the alienation and dissociation intrinsic in a world saturated with imagery that appears to appear and disappear ever-more rapidly. A shadow, a handstand, a large curtain draped over a houseplant: by photographing such things, he provides a 2nd life in which they become irreversible. Emile Kees Handstand, 2023 Jo Hummel's minimalist abstractions have a specific ahistorical quality; they connect multiple histories of product experimentation and creation from worldwide within an unique visual language. They situate the audience within landscapes that feel unlimited with a low mist hanging over the horizon. Though unknown, these images are deeply serene, inviting you to revel in the simple enjoyments of a constantly twilit, pastoral world.Llus-Carles Peric Cap a La Calma, 2014 The scenes that Bianca MacCall paints a train window showing the carriage's interior over the passing landscape; a barely-visible vehicle hidden by an ochre-yellow drape seem intentionally strange. They make me think about the simultaneous absurdity and beauty of the world in front of me, considering familiar scenes through an unfamiliar lens. Bianca MacCall Perpetual Movement, 2023 Henry Ward's painting practice is ever-shifting. In truth, if you stand in front of among his paintings for long enough, you might see it alter in real time. The uncertain, unpredictable nature of his work is what makes me keep going back to it.Henry Ward Bethany III, 2023.