These are the quietly beautiful portraits of a very talented friend of mine- Austin Power. Austin has this to say about his practice- ‘I am interested in showing the difficulty and discomfort in fully understanding a person. I leave my subjects incomplete to highlight their limitations, as well as my own inability to see the subject beyond the influence of myself’. What I feel we have left then are the residues of a person, the things that loiter and hang in his mind, translated by Austin onto paper into an evocative and purely haunting image.
The images above are from a series he is working on that uses artists he knows as subjects from the paintings. Much to my honour he based a series on me, he said during an interview for buysomedamnart- ‘Ki is an artist that I found online and instantly fell in love with. One of my newest and initially unknowing muses; the sensitivity in his portraits feels achingly familiar to me. I’m currently mapping our growing friendship through watercolour portraits. The portrait you see here was painted before I properly met him, built only from my perceptions of his work and online presence.’
Austin lives and practices art in New York. to see more of his tender portraits then visit his website at withapower.
