Kevin Cleary

K.B. Clear paints portraits of people found in archives.   Painted like film stills from an obscure documentary, these figures are caught in moments of pause.   Clear arranges these works in non-linear sequences   Narrative expectation is suspended  Identities reimagined  Subjects undressed and redressed    Placed under a theatrical lens  They become characters on a stage, their pose and presence observable   Fact and fiction collapse into one another as a play unfolds   Portraiture captures these social performances   Portraiture captures them off-stage and in-between acts, too   Clear paints these interplays between documentation and theatre.  

Personal website.