Technically, Michael Mapes is a portraitist, although he rarely uses paint. Instead, he deconstructs the original subject in both a figurative and literal sense by dissecting photographs and then painstakingly reconstructing individual fragments into elaborate portraits. Taking hundreds of tiny photographs, gelatin capsules, vials, insect pins, and other “specimens,” artist Michael Mapes collages his own interpretation of renowned dutch portraits. Using the paintings of Rembrandt, Nicolaes Eliasz PIckenoy, and others, Mapes recreates the work in painstaking detail using the tiny fragments and pins. “Of particular importance,” Mapes says, is the “inclusion of new photos and materials intended to extend the imagined experience of what is captured in the original portrait to suggest the artist’s consideration and processes.” Michael lives and works in New York. For more information or to get in touch with him, we invite you to follow the link below.
