Daniel Martirossian

I aim to create photo-realistic black and white portrait drawings in charcoal that depict my subject at the specific moment when the photograph was taken. With the use of a photographic image, I produce large-scale charcoal drawings of my sitters, finding oblique details and little nuances to convey their personality. The panel drawings underneath my large-scale drawings offer a nuance by extending the timeframe of an interaction, as if creating ‘animations’ of a certain moment. The mixture of blurred and detailed close-ups of individual features underneath my large-scale drawings offer different ‘states’ of the sitter, conveying a sense of self. Although my portraits are essentially drawings, they are as much ‘about’ the nature of photography as portraiture. Therefore, my intention is that the viewer recognises the person I depict by creating a ‘likeness’ that is captured through the lens, but enlivened by the use of charcoal, demonstrating a sense of truthfulness.