Cristina Troufa, Voyeur #2, acrylic on canvas, 31.5H x 31,5W (Left)
I have always been a great fan of Troufa’s paintings. Cristina Troufa is a Portuguese artist based out of Porto, who creates realistic acrylic paintings on canvas, however, her approach is quite unique. Troufa very carefully and selectively renders specific areas of her paintings while leaving a significant amount of negative space for her subjects to occupy within. If anything, it seems as if the negative space and unrendered portions in her work are what breaths life into her subjects. I have been studying her work for a couple of years now and admire the way she handles space.
Very often, negative space is just as important to our understanding of form as the form itself. Think about clouds– their beauty is most apparent when surrounded by bright blue sky. The painter uses simple lines and negative space to punctuate her compositions, choosing to highlight the flesh which makes her figures essentially human.
Her concentration of color and light on the exposed flesh of her subjects speaks to our tendency to judge on appearance, often unable to look past the person we think we see and notice each other for who we really are. That is exactly the reason that relates to my work. The empty spaces around my figures are just as important to me as the figures themselves making the protagonists strikeout of their existence on the canvas. They are exposed to the viewer, vulnerable and human.
artsy forager. (2012). Undone Beauty: Cristina Troufa. [online] Available at: http://artsyforager.com/2012/06/18/undone-beauty-cristina-troufa/[Accessed 1 May 2018].
Emptykingdom.com. (2013). Less Is More – EMPTY KINGDOM. [online] Available at: http://www.emptykingdom.com/featured/less-is-more/ [Accessed 1 May 2018].
Michalis Theodosiou 