Amanda (Primary Title)
Text Portraits (Series Title)
Ben Durham, American, born 1982 (Artist)
"The creation of the drawing destroys the narrative content. The soft texture of the paper begins to tear under the force of the pencil, the words get lost among the palimpsest of information."—Ben Durham
The Text Portraits series is composed entirely of handwritten words that express everything the artist knows, remembers, or has been told about the subject. The subjects are friends, classmates, and acquaintances from Durham’s childhood in Lexington, Kentucky. In a daily process of combing that city’s police reports for familiar names and faces, Durham collected mug shots and arrest records. The heavily worked text, at times, wears away the thick, handmade paper’s surface. The series, which began as a meditative process of remembering and recording, creates complex portraits built from fact and reflection.
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