Robert by Cherry Hood

Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto

Contemporary Australian artist Cherry Hood is known for her haunting, large-scale portraits. She specializes in intense depictions which are usually a blend of anonymous facial features rather than portraits of specific persons. Hood’s most common medium is watercolour, with a method of allowing the thinned paint to bleed and drip downward on the composition. In Robert, the artist has recreated and mastered the ‘bleed and drip’ effect using acrylic on a canvas. The sitter is portrayed above shoulder-level, hovering amid a white background. The bleeding pigment begins in two streaks on his left cheek and increases as the viewer’s eye is drawn downard, the sitter’s chest and pale blue shirt fading away into the canvas. This monumental painting is intense yet delicate, exemplifying Hood’s talent for depicting the human face removed from its identity.

Cherry Hood is represented by galleries in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. She has exhibited widely throughout the world, including solo shows in Canada, the United States and Switzerland.