Greg Denton: "anyone lived..."  

Four Hundred Faces From Guelph

March 8, 2001 to September 29, 2002.

“anyone lived...”,Guelph artist Greg Denton’s wildly successful series of 400 portraits painted from life, drew the attention of visitors to the Art Centre, as they looked for and found familiar faces.  Denton painted each portrait in a single session on a 6" x 8" artist’s canvas, under controlled lighting and compositional conditions.  Arranged chronologically in the gallery, 100 paintings on each wall, this exhibition showed how the artist perfected his technique over the course of 1 year, skillfully capturing the visual idiosyncrasies of each sitter.

“anyone lived...” was commissioned with funds raised by the Art Centre volunteers and with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program.  This exhibition was sponsored by Wyndham Art Supplies in Guelph with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.  It was presented by the Art Centre in celebration of Guelph’s 175^th anniversary in 2002.  

"The distinctness of each individual portrait subject is submitted to a modularized format and repetitive process that is part of the format.  While a resemblance based on distinct individual physiognomy is attempted, the repetition of the format provides a counter-emphasis  that diminishes individual distinction and asserts an identity based on compliance and conformity.  There is an accumulated sameness to the portraits that overwhelms and challenges their status as a record of individuality.  The format is predetermined and predictable. The process of life painting, however, is improvisational, unpredictable,  and subject to failure. Each individual likeness is contingent on the performative  acuity of the painting session as it is enacted within the format.  That is, I could fail in my attempt to record a completely recognizable likeness, and sometimes I do fail, in varying degrees.  But then the modularized repetitiveness of the overall structure provides a kind of contextual narrative meaning to those failures.  What it demonstrates is how the process of documentation distorts, or actually can construct, the content of the document." 

                                                                                                Greg Denton, January 2001