Grey Cube Gallery proudly presents the fourth Portrait online art show for the month of January 2024. The show encompassed a range of artistic styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, charcoal, graphite, ink, colored pencil, photography, digital art). Each submission has been judged based on the following elements of artistic expression: orginality and quality of art, overall design, creativity, interpretation of the theme, demonstration of artistic ability and usage of medium. Out of all entries, 98 artworks were shortlisted for inclusion in the show. The competition attracted entries from many countries across the world: USA, Australia, Russia, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, South Korea, Netherlands, Canda, Sweden, Chile, Hungary, Taiwan, Portugal, Mexico and Israel. Enjoy the show and thank you for expressing an interest in our competition.

Xiong Yanteng is a member of the Professional Alliance of American Artists and the Portrait Society of America. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts, Minzu University of China. He has won first prizes in many international competitions and has been reported by several art media outlets. He has published many international artist magazines, been selected for many international art exhibitions, and won awards in American national exhibitions and other honors.

I've been fascinated with black and white art all my life. I think black and white displays the underlying emotion of an image that color distracts from. I enjoy working on a variety of subjects: from wildlife, portraits and some landscapes. I look for subject matter that is highly charged and have great depth; the challenge for me is not only capture the emotion of a subject but also the intense range of contrast.

Portraits afford an opportunity to paint light and compelling form, as well as explore wide-ranging emotive qualities. Each work is about what the face portrays, a person conveys; and it is about communication both in word and gesture and through visual language, and across mediums, across time. I discover and excavate many themes present in this retelling of a life, often grappling with concealment and revelation. In painting individuals at different ages and life stages I am also engaging themes of temporal change, individual vulnerability and human mortality. At turns, I find moments of strength, decency, calm or vulnerability; traces of pain, self-protection, openness, or glimmers of hopefulness; thoughtfulness, affection, pride or earnestness are lurking in these faces. I am engaging with the enigmatic. The difficult and satisfying challenge in my portraiture is to portray some truth through the depiction of the person’s countenance and by engaging their emotional state; and in so doing to suggest our complex humanity and shared experience.

Dr. Georgina Macken is an internationally experienced, award-winning art director and watercolour portrait painter. She has a doctorate in cognitive and developmental psychology from the New School for Social Research, New York City. She currently resides on the coast at Killcare, NSW in Australia. A former advertising Art Director and current a portrait artist, Georgina also homeschools her two autistic children. In the past, Georgina worked in New York City as a dance music DJ. Georgina’s passion for art and portraiture is inspired by her fascination with the soul and its delicious brightness which glows within the face.