IN-PERSON: Learning. Life. Work

Abstract

The act of painting a human face involves active deciphering: studying, then translating another person’s physiognomy through a series of concentrated periods of looking. Unlike viewing images of people’s faces within online contexts, the sustained looking that must be undertaken when creating a rendering of another person’s face enmeshes the subject and the observer in a singularly intimate psychological plane. This peculiar connectedness happens on account of both participant’s real-time awareness of each other’s physical existence, and their mutual willingness to be contemplated in earnest for each idiosyncrasy presented by their features — In short, to be actually seen. While in the process of painting a portrait of one of their peers, students become forced to acknowledge the physicality and life-force of a fellow student whom they might otherwise have observed only as a virtual proxy outside of class on social media, a rising trend which can be partially credited for unprecedented levels of loneliness among university students. Taking the time to render someone’s likeness by meticulous slow and careful observation is an active refusal to anonymize them. In my presentation, Inter-Face: The Painted Portrait as Antidote to Alienation for Learners in the Digital Age, I will illuminate portrait-painting as a mechanism for staving-off social isolation, and fostering connectedness between students in higher education environments. In the spirit of consciously incorporating the ‘A’ within STEAM discourse, my thesis proposes portrait painting as a humane method for cultivating transcendent connections in a tech-dominated post secondary social landscape.