The Watercolour Portraits of Ali Cavanaugh

How do artists do it? My personal art taste is normally abstract or nature focussed, an impression rather than an accurate representation. I love mark making and the quality of line. Occasionally though I am drawn to art that looks to so real I am just left staring.

I love these pieces from American painter Ali Cavanaugh, they are actually modern frescos. What Ali does is rather beautoful, she layers watercolour pigment on thin kaolin clay with tiny round synthetic brushes. The result has a luminosity that makes the subject feel like they are an actual person standing in the room. I mean you can see these are painted rather than real, but there is something in the quality of them that has a 'real' presence.

Her subject matter varies, she does paint more ethereal watercolours of children, capturing their innocent eyes and playful poses. And of course there are the socks - yes arms in socks in interesting poses! I love the series she also completed where her sitter was the recovering cancer patient and teenager Milly, such beautiful portraits.

Ali attributes her fixation with the visual world to loosing her hearing age 2 through spinal meningitis. This caused her to depend on body language and she became sensitive, in her words " to the people around me and the unspoken language revealed through compositions of the human body."

Beautiful artworks. See more at The Jealous Curator.