Kristen Copham - New York

Kristen Copham was born in St. Paul MN.  She is the illustrator of over a dozen children's books, textbooks and murals nationwide, as well as an accomplished oil painter and portraitist.  Her exhibition history in Minnesota includes Gallery 13, Griffin Gallery, St. Paul Pioneer Press Gallery, Image Dump Exhibitions, Acme Visual Arts and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts among others, as well as galleries and exhibition spaces in Seattle, WA; San Pedro, CA; Galena, IL; Centuria, WI; Brooklyn, NY and Ft. Myers, FL.   Her work is found in private and corporate collections worldwide. She holds an MBA from Carlson School of Management at the U of M, Minneapolis, MN and a BFA in Fine Art from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Ms. Copham currently lives and works in New York City, where she owns and operates NY Studio Gallery.

Artist Statement

Peepers, Noggins & Kissers
Your Face Here Project by Kristen Copham

Portrait painting has been a tradition in painting for hundreds of years. From the ancient Egyptians and Greeks to modern times, from Botticelli, Velasquez and Rembrandt to Gainsborough, Alice Neel and Lucian Freud, the depictions of people throughout history has included nobility, heads of state, patrons, saints, peasants and anonymous sitters.

The most central element to a portrait, what makes a portrait distinctive, is the face. A circle with two dots and a line reads as a face. The face is the first thing an infant recognizes and responds to. More than any other human body part, the face is what draws us to others, what engages us, what belies feeling and emotion, and what makes us most unique.

When I first moved to New York City from my hometown of Minneapolis, I was immediately struck by the literal sea of faces I encountered walking down the street. While the Earth pushes the limits of its carrying capacity for humans as a species, we all continue to respond to our right and desire to procreate, to leave part of our selves behind after we’re gone. I wanted to continue working in the portrait tradition while capturing the essence of uniqueness within the ever-exploding masses.

In order to capture the story of each individual, each 10” x 10” oil on board portrait is painted in an hour during a live sitting. I record the sitter’s name and contact information, assign them a number, and often take notes about the individual and the conversation that took place. I look for the attributes in each person’s face that makes them unique, that captures their expression or personality, that sets them apart from others.

To portray the overwhelming sense of our multitudinous population, I install the work by blending the portrait and landscape traditions. I limit my pallet to six modern colors, and each portrait is randomly given a primary background hue of either red, yellow, blue or green. The portraits are rendered in thick, colorful paint in an impressionist style with bold brushstrokes and strong contrasting values. The end result – an installation of hundreds of faces entitled numerically according to color – creates an op-art-like tiled grid that ultimately de-personalizes the individual.