Renaissance Portraiture

What does it mean to challenge portraiture in an age of modernity, and how can typically-labelled, painted Renaissance portraiture, be challenged within the contemporary world? Janet Werner, an artist/painter from Montreal, QC. has done just that. Known for her exhibitions “Another Perfect Day”, “Too Much Happiness” and “Who's Sorry Now”, Werner forces us to question what the term “portraiture” truly means and how a typically generic form of artwork, in our modern world of “selfies” and mass photography, can be transformed into a powerful message of self-reflection and self-worth. Although we expect portraiture's to merely be “a shell of someone's self” (Kissick, 2013), we expect that in the physical sense, and less so in the mental and emotional sense – Werner makes the world

She stated in an interview that her portraits of “desire and loss”, and that all the things she's representing are things that are “meant to go on in silence; not repressed, but under the surface”, which is felt when looking into the emptiness of her subjects' eyes; it's like they're missing something: “deficiencies (of) vitamins, sunshine, anti-allergy medication, opportunity, and love” (Walsh, 2002). Yet somehow, with all this emptiness, there's so much that fills you; a sense of humanity within the confines of clustered facial features and animal heads, which creates “a sickly discomfort that gathers mass as you move from piece to piece” (Skene,