Annemarie Busschers makes landscapes out of faces. The massive, closely-framed portraits are painted with rich detail, creating a nearly-overwhelming presence. While her subjects have shifted from the likes of children with chicken pox and old men more towards herself in more recent work, the attention to texture and layers within the face is never compromised, treated ominously in monochromatic tones that often have the subject fading or dripping away from the present-painting entirely. Busschers was born in ‘S-Hertogenbosch, the same town in the southern Netherlands that was home to Hieronymus Bosch, and it showed early in her career — her pencil drawings are extremely precise and fantastically complex, while grappling with religious themes. But in her current state, the focus is always on an individual, often caught in a moment of tension, the incredible surplus of visual details both demonstrative and expressive.
