Caryl Burtner | Sonya Clark | Talia Greene | Ruth Marten | Althea Murphy-Price | Loren Schwerd
My time farming the fertile fields of hair depiction was passionate fun and an education. Everyone has a personal experience with their hair and, as a signifier of culture, class, attraction, mores and invention, there is nothing more fascinating.
Every time I thought I’d invented a particularly outlandish configuration to draw, I’d see it walking by on someone’s head. Having always loved drawing figures with special attention to the hair-dos, it was natural to expand this and exaggerate the gesture of the hair. I called these portraits the “Hurricane Series,” running through the alphabet and reflecting my interests in eighteenth-century engravings, cinema duotone posters, and Dutch still-life paintings.
After sixteen years using hair as my subject, surrogate and focus, I look with satisfaction and some amazement that art about hair has become gestalt in itself. I’d love to take some credit for this popularity, but it has too much universal appeal for that.
