Ali Silverstein - Portraits, Large

1. Things
As I pronounce this word (do you hear?) a stillness forms; the stillness surrounding Things. All movement comes to rest, turns into contour, and out of past and future time something lasting is composed: space, the great tranquility of Things which nothing drives onwards. (Rilke)

Unconditional Love
- 5 x 7.5 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
- Collection of Adrian and Emma Vickers
- •
Untitled Israel
- 3 x 4.5 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
Celeste
- 5 x 7.5 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
- •
Laura
- 3 x 4.5 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
Sisters
- 4 x 6 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
Laura's Freckles
- 5 x 7 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
- >Collection of Philip Weldon
- •
Sophie 2 Upside Down
- 3 x 4.5 feet each
- Acrylic on Canvas
Whether Together or Separated
- 5 x 6 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
Watching TV
- 5 x 6 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
After Louise
- 5 x 6 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
Between Bed and Dinner
- 5 x 7 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
- Collection of Rosette Delug
- •
Alex
- 4 x 6 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
- Collection of Maryiam Eisler
- •
The Body Is Not A Closed Entity
- 5 x 6 feet
- Acrylic on Canvas
- •

Portraits (Large, Canvas)

ESSE

Czeslaw Milosz

I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of metro stations flew by; I didn’t notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin – but why isn’t the power of sight absolute?—and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

Brie-Compte-Robert, 1954

Unconditional Love

Untitled Israel

Celeste

Laura

Sisters

Laura's Freckles

Sophie 2 Upside Down

Whether Together or Separated

Watching TV

After Louise

Between Bed and Dinner

Alex

The Body Is Not A Closed Entity