What Is a Portrait?

AKSB 904, Beirut campus

The Department of Art & Design is hosting a lecture titled: “What Is a Portrait?” by David Maes.

Originally from Montreal, David Maes has been living in Europe since 1987. Although he started his creative life as a painter, printmaking and drawing have become his principal means of expression these past few years.

David’s work has always been concerned with the representation of the human body and more specifically the portrait. He says, “I use ‘traditional’ means of expression to arrive at a ‘contemporary’ representation of the people whom I frequent or meet during my travels. It is my hope that in concentrating on the specificity of each person I portray, I touch upon that part of him or her which is universal.”

Drawing from life is at the heart of his creative process. It allows him to apprehend the world and renew his vocabulary of forms. His work is about seeing, but ultimately it is also about his relationship to others. The ambition of art, in his view, is to help us to reconcile ourselves with the complexity of the world and eventually contribute to an understanding of who we are.