Annemarie Busschers (featured on our blog here) is fascinated by human imperfection. As a society, we tend to run away from anything that renders us imperfect – yet from the artist’s viewpoint, these traits we so eagerly try to disown are what lend to an individual’s distinction. Busschers’ embrace of all imperfections is reflected in her raw, emotive portraits of people, which focus deeply on the lines, textures, and colorations of the skin’s surface to draw attention to her subjects’ flaws and irregularities.
Working from photographs of models (which include beloved family members and at times the artist herself) Busschers uses a mixture of mediums including acrylic and pencil to recreate her subjects in painstaking detail, careful not to undermine or exaggerate what the camera informs her. Recently, the artist has focused her work on the visual effects of aging and deformity caused by disease. Busschers presents these individuals they are, but given the treatment of awe and respect. Appearances that may seem frightening or ghastly become symbols of courage and strength, often in the face of difficult changes. The artist works deliberately in large scale format so as to give her portraits a commanding presence that is not easily turned away from. Busschers’ approach to portraying her subjects in this manner is direct yet non confrontational, and one gets the sense that she means to honor these “nameless icons… trying to be him or herself.”
Busschers lives and works in the Netherlands. Find more of her artwork on her website.
Italian artist 
Sarah Ball's oil paintings, subtle in their complexity, are intended for the viewer to encounter the portrait's subject intimately. The practice of physiognomy, or judging the character of a person just from their facial features or expressions, has long been a subject of fascination for the artist. In efforts like her current Anima Mundi show "Themself," she culls her subjects from historic photographic archives, social media, and beyond. "These source images become a starting point for a methodical process of understanding, assumption and translation, where the aesthetic ‘mask' and what lies beneath become the focus of engagement,” the gallery says.