Who makes art, and what does it mean to be an artist? Artists have often tried to address such questions in portraits of one another, and of themselves. An exhibition selected from the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG) permanent collection entitled Artists by Artists, which highlights these explorations, opens this Saturday, January 18.

The exhibition features the work of more than 30 visual artists, including photographic portraits by Lionel Stevenson, Dominique Cruchet, and Richard Furlong of Prince Edward Island artists Jack Turner, John Bradford MacCallum, Hilda Woolnough, Bill McFadden, and Nigel Roe. Also included is: a charcoal portrait of Donald Andrus by Bruno Bobak, Andrus’ portrait of Adam Sultan, Brian Burke‘s portrait of Libby Oughton, and a sculpture of legendary Quebecois artist Armand Vaillancourt by the late Carl Phillis.

The portraits in this exhibition make visible how artists think about what they do and who they are, often in the settings where they work and live.

“If a portrait is a record of its subject, it also reveals something of its maker’s relationship to the person portrayed and the social world they share,” remarks Curator Pan Wendt. “Portraits of artists show us how artists define the singularity of their role, whether they are self-portraits that function as self-presentation, or images of other artists that record the identifications, rivalries, and intimacies between peers.”

PEI Professional Theatre Network