Experimental Portraiture!!

     Experimental Portraiture is a section of art that seeks to capture the spirit of a subject beyond simple facial capture. Experimental portraiture has been around for a while, coming about in the non-visual portrait creations of writers like Gertrude Stein. Science and psychology also played a role in the development of experimental portraiture, as researchers like Sigmund Freud began to study personalities and what defines a person. Artists, often taking their inspiration from what changes in the societies they reside in, caught this "personality bug" and began to do studies of their own, pushing themselves and their work to copy those studies and really get at the heart of their subjects.       
     Experimental portraiture can be made in a variety of ways, such as with paint, as is demonstrated in the work of Stephanie Schmitt. Schmitt paints portraits of people, focusing on facial expressions and the emotions behind them. She overlays various views of a subject, resulting in an almost ghostly image, full of movement and action. She most specifically seeks to capture not only one emotion, but several, as well as the shifts between them. The result is the aforementioned overlaying of faces. She paints realistically in 3 dimensions, because she thinks realism is integral to what she's trying to capture. 

Untitled, Stephanie Schmitt, 2005

     Other artists use photo manipulation to create their work, such as in the art of James Honzik, an exerimental artist from the west coast. He makes photographic collages, often overlaying images of models on images of corrosion, such as rusty school buses and the like. Honzik likens his subjects to things found in nature, such as the moss of a tree, seeking to define the person in the portrait by these things. Through his work, he is attempting to discover what makes a person captivating, or powerful, or just plain interesting. 

Crown of Rust, Dress of Stone, James Honzik, 2007.