Jenny Morgan begins her tensely psychological portraits by photographing her subjects, often people she knows, and painting them in painstaking detail. She then obliterates parts of the surface, sanding away and peeling back skins of paint until the figure appears spectral and transparent in some areas and palpably raw and real in others. The result can be spatially disorienting, as in Piano Song where face and torso seem to flatten and recede while hands appear variously thick and fleshy or striated as if they were unevenly printed reproductions. Building on traditions of portraiture, Morgan’s work has a decidedly contemporary presence, emphasizing the elusive, multifaceted, and interior qualities of the human beings they would represent.
Courtesy of the artist and Driscoll Babcock Galleries