UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2004

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Extended Family

Gallery: She's Under Our Skin




	painting by Jennifer Tibbetts

JENNIFER TIBBETTS ’95G, ’98G CHOSE not to paint the moors, the dales or the coast of Yorkshire, England, where she was born and raised. Instead, Tibbetts filled the sketchbooks of her youth with drawings and paintings of faces. Face after face—of family members, of friends, teachers, and neighbors. For 15 years, Tibbetts’ work has largely been abstract. The portraiture in “Visages” marks a return to her natural inclination to paint the face. The works were completed in 2003. The show also includes works from Tibbetts’ 2004 residency in Nimes, France.

“Each portrait is distinguished by a type of covering,” writes Hampden and Wheeler Galleries Director Anne LaPrade of Tibbetts’ recent show in the Hampden Gallery. “The covering may disguise a section of the face, or envelope it entirely. Tibbets’ paintings show the infinite variety of ways in which the human face can be adorned, camouflaged, marked, scarred or otherwise altered to indicate or obscure social standing, professional status, familial roles or just plain vanity.”

Through the scale and composition of the portraits and the repetitive use of the mask image, Tibbetts’ paintings emphasize the external aspects of the person whose face is painted. Yet upon viewing the 20 paintings together in the gallery, it seems Tibbetts is asking us to contemplate what lies both beneath the mask and under the skin.

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