Sherry Tompalski and Graham Thompson

Show ran from 11/1/2006 to 12/2/2006

"The Talking Portrait Installation: Portraiture and New Media," paintings, time-lapse photography and soundscapes

Artists Tompalski (painter) and Thompson (videographer) have developed a form of portraiture that includes paintings, portable CD-ROM Players and compressed video. The portraits are painted from a live model sitting for approximately six hours. The audio portion is edited from the comments, questions and reflections made by the model during the sitting, and the time-lapse photography records the development of the portrait. Thus the audience is invited into the intimate personal experience of a portrait sitting.This kind of artistic expression is growing amongst the community, with collaborations between the traditional artistic mediums and the modern digital age becoming popular due to the power of the medium. By blending the process of creation into the artwork itself, as well as all the struggles and issues that come with it, the changing nature of the work becomes a metaphor that some may interpret as a reflection of the world we all live in.It can be hard to imagine both mediums working together, to imagine others coming into this zone (such as st louis video production companies working with painters in their area, as an example) but by sitting and enjoying the collaborative effort and work of Tompalski and Thompson one can begin to see how the old and the new may not need to be enemies, but instead can work together to create something extraordinary.