Portrait in Dots

Catalogue note

The face is built the way the divisionists built light -- thousands of discrete dabs, no outlines anywhere -- so the skin reads as deep blue at distance and resolves into embedded reds, violets and golds up close: optical mixing in the tradition Seurat systematized, performed freehand. The ground argues back in the opposite technique, broad palette-knife drags of spring green and lavender: one surface stippled, one smeared. The blue skin is non-local color used as presence rather than description, a strategy with company from Picasso's blue figures to Amy Sherald's gray ones; the amber eyes set the register for the whole canvas.