Thanks to a new art project, the faces of Geary students now adorn the high school hallways. But these aren’t your everyday portraits.
The Art I and II students, who used each other as models for the project, chose famous portraits from great artists of the past and depicted their peers in classical poses and clothes. Art teacher Liza Terrell said the assignment was inspired by the work of Kehinde Wiley, who painted New York models posed as if they were European noblemen and aristocrats.
“I have always been a fan of Kehinde Wiley’s work,” Terrell explained in an email to The Geary Star, “and I wanted to show the students a few artists for Black History Month, so Kehinde Wiley was just an obvious choice for me.”
Terrell picked a collection of paintings by the old masters, had her students pull names at random for which classmate would be their model, then had them pose like whichever painting they chose.
The students used graphite pencils that vary in softness, which led to “rich, dark values, and very light delicate values for the actual portrait part,” Terrell explained. “The backgrounds were painted separately, using acrylic paint,” she said. “In order to create work inspired by Kehinde Wiley, students did graphite transfers of flowers and designed their own ‘wallpaper-like’ backgrounds.”
Wiley is perhaps best known for his official portrait of former President Barack Obama, which depicts Obama seated while surrounded by bushes and flowers.
Terrell said she was pleased with the students’ work. “I think they all turned out really well,” she said. “I made sure to really push the students to include a full range of value, from the very darkest they could get to the white of the page. I also, of course, appreciated the students who put a lot of effort into their background designs.”
Some examples of the project are depicted here, and even more can be viewed online at www.gearyschools.org/vnews/display.v/ART/605cc3ef14a0f?in_archive=1.