Doug Simay

Since 1500 and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, portraits have played an important role in both aesthetics and the depiction of history. At first portraiture was rigorously true (think Rembrandt). As art became more expressive and modern (think John Singer Sargent through to Lucien Freud) portraits carried a more spiritual, emotional tenor. We look at contemporary portraits to record the person as well as the spirit of the subject. We are curious about “everyman/woman” as they mirror life around us. We live our lives aware of not only the rich and powerful but also the common and local.

Neil Shigley has since 2005 elected to portray those who live on the fringes of contemporary life. The homeless are both visible to us as we traverse the landscape and invisible to us since we know little about their lives. They are both present in our recognition and absent in our understanding.

A powerful artist leads us to look and importantly “see” a rendered subject. Neil Shigley’s skills with mark-making remind us that the human body is both an object and an experiential reality. His subjects look back at us, reminding us that they too have stories and they are also real and present. If we can understand what we are seeing then we can have empathy and concern tempered by that understanding.

While the homeless are not our friends – they are our neighbors. Social humans live in neighborhoods. We are at the same time both private and public.

Neil Shigley’s artistic passion displays compassion. He helps us to remember that our lives move in a complicated realm. On this Earth we are all neighbors. Each of us fulfills our roles with each person’s role being substantive and interwoven into the collective fabric of our precious lives.