National Portrait Gallery

    On Friday, January 14th we went to the National Portrait Gallery.  For some reason I did not think I was going to enjoy this gallery and I assumed it was just going to have old portraits of all the monarchs of Britain, but I was very wrong.  There was a lot of contemporary work displayed as well, and I actually really liked the gallery, especially a lot of the photography.  I liked Jason Bell's exhibit, An Englishman in New York, which included photos of famous British people who live in New York.  I felt a lot of the statements were somehow related to me and my current experience between New York and London and the which I found really interesting.  My favorite was the one of Kate Winslet.  I felt his black and white photos really captured the aura of each person and how it related to their statements.
     I keep noticing that I am drawn to small pencil sketches.  I really liked John Partridge's drawings that were located in the British Artisan Room in his exhibit British Artists in Rome.  They were made of pencil, watercolors and engravings and appeared really simple until I noticed the fine detail.  I think it is hard to get such great definition with a pencil and I was amazed at how small his drawings were.  His exhibit was just composed of a bunch of his sketches of his British artist friends who went to Rome, which is actually a similar concept to Jason Bell's work.  My favorite sketch by Partridge was one of Richard James Wyatt (1825) because of the detail in the face and hair that were so tiny and well rendered.
     I also enjoyed the Taylor Wessing exhibit from the Photographic Portrait Prize.  I thought that a few of the pieces captured a strong emotion that I could feel sometimes without reading the wall statement.  I was struck by one of the first few I saw by Hadas Mualem called Yasna from a series called In Between.  It was a photo of a young woman sitting at a table in a simple kitchen, and I immediately felt a sadness and hopelessness aura about it by simply looking into her direct stare.  I was surprised by the two photos that won first and second prize.  The first place winner was called Huntress with Buck by David Chancellor.  It was a beautiful picture and the colors in the landscape were stunning, however I just liked it for the aesthetic reasons, no deeper meaning.  I don't always feel that art has to have a deeper meaning, but I felt a stronger photo should have been picked for first place.  I just liked this show because I have seen a lot of photography on this trip and it has been inspiring me and making me think I should take more photography classes in order to follow up on a lot of things that seem interesting to me.