Diane Farris Gallery is pleased to open the 2003 Fall Season with an exhibition of portraits by gallery artists in varying mediums including oil, watercolour, drawing, collage and photography.

In the 19th century, photography removed the need for painting the portrait to provide documentary evidence of people. Although photography eliminated this particular need for painting, the practice never completely vanished and today remains alive and vibrant while the use of photographic portraiture has taken on new and different meanings. This exhibition examines some of the varying approaches to contemporary portraiture.

Shannon Belkin, Justin Ogilvie and Jesse Garbe all disclose influences of the old masters in their oil paintings. Belkin's highly realistic rooster calls on a time in the British Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century when it was fashionable to have portraits done of one's animals. Ogilvie's self portrait penetrates influences of DaVinici and Lucien Freud as he takes a metaphysical approach towards portraiture. Garbe, still a student at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design presents a self-portrait inspired by Rembrant, Kollwitz, and Uglow.

When viewing the photographs of Phil Borges and Lincoln Clarkes, the focus tends to be more on the inner soul and character of their subjects. Borges exhibits an image of a young Kalash girl he encountered during his ongoing photographic documentation of the people of the world's endangered cultures. His portraits draw the viewer to the plight and the beauty of these subjects. Former fashion photographer Clarkes' portrait of one of his "Heroines" is the cover picture of his book by the same name. The Heroines Series is an epic photographic documentary of the addicted women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Janieta Eyre, on the other hand, uses the medium of photography to portray herself in surreal, fantastical images of herself as twins, clones, or in other amusing or grotesque scenarios.

Angela Grossmann and Cherry Hood do not portray a particular person or nature in their respective works. Their subjects are composites of several people combined or imagined and therefore, in the end, do not exist. Grossmann uses oil, ink and collage to create her soulful portrait on mylar. Hood composes her outsized scale painting of the face of an adolescent boy to compress the viewer's entire vision into a densely packed optical experience - examining psychoanalytic and other theories relating to the gaze and desire.

Chris Woods, whose highly realistic paintings always address the realm of popular culture, exhibits a 6 x 6 foot portrait of the Barenaked Ladies which was commissioned to be for the cover of their new CD to be released in October. The painting is entitled "Everything to everyone".