Melba Price - Rapture

Around a year ago Melba Price began to make a set of 50 portrait paintings. The subject matter is people in their youth, from their late teens to early twenties. She based her paintings off of photographs that she found on the internet. Her medium is simply gouache on paper. The paintings are not set to a certain size, but are all similar (roughly 13x19). The edges are slightly jagged, and some of them are torn. The forms are very simple, and are mostly head shots that show the subject from around the shoulders and up. Many of the people are not posing they are just caught in the moment. Some of them seem sad, while others appear to be very content or even angered. The pieces also vary slightly in style. Some a re very realistic and look more like photographs than paintings, while others are more abstract, having very defined brush strokes. The backgrounds are simple, mostly one color with some shading or a slight pattern. Sometimes the background matches the picture and sometimes it compliments it. The emphasis of these is on the expressions of the people and not everything else. When you look at the paintings you almost feel like you have stepped into their lives for a moment. You see how they feel for that tenth of a second it takes to make a photo. You can tell which of the people knew the person that was capturing them and who didn't. Melba Price did an awesome job of translation them to paint.You can feel how these people felt with little effort just by looking at them.



These 50 paintings now line the walls of Midway Contemporary Art under the collective title "Rapture". According to thefreedictionary.com the definition of rapture is "The state of being transported by a lofty emotion; ecstasy" After getting the definition of rapture and then thinking of the pieces I get the impression that Price believes that being youthful means that you are emotional. That you can be easily caught up in your emotions, and that they sometimes get the better of you.

The pieces are at eye level with equal spacing within their respective groups. The groups are determined by the background of the painting. One wall has paintings in which a sky background it portrayed, while another has a rainbow of solid, brightly colored backgrounds. The painting are set up so that they are not flat on the wall. Each of them has a piece of foam board behind them so make them pop out of the wall. This gives them each their own shadow on the wall that gives them a little bit more life. Like they are 3 dimensional figures rather than just paintings.

Photos were taken from the Midway Contemporary Art website.