Karine Bassal

 

Karine Bassal is a Montreal-based artist. Always creative, her love of art led her to complete the Fine Arts program at John Abbott College where she discovered the virtues of contemporary art. To deepen her understanding of the art world, she completed her Bachelor’s degree in Art History at McGill University while working as a representative in galleries around Montreal. Following a year of Master’s level classes in Art History at Concordia University, she chose to devote herself to her art production full-time.

Always attracted to eyes, Bassal is drawn to their distinctiveness and seemingly limitless potential for communicability. Her oil paintings, representing the closely cropped and magnified eyes of her exclusively female subjects, are a unique and fresh departure from traditional portraiture. Bassal’s figurative style, executed with photorealistic precision on large-scale canvases, heightens the impact of the gazes depicted. Her meticulous application of colors, sometimes layered in rich monochrome tones on textured surfaces, seeks to captivate the stares of onlookers and awaken their senses.

In the tradition of Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863), Bassal’s works destabilize the relationship between subject and object. The spectator is not the only one doing the looking; the direct stares of the anonymous sitters follow the viewers. The artist unveils very little about the models and their stories, often sharing only the first letter of their name through the title.

 

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	Audrey Hepburn 24x24 Oil on Canvas $860
	Miss Monroe 24x24 Oil on Canvas $860
	Liz 24x24 Oil on Canvas $860
	MM 24x24 Oil on Canvas $860