Description
Portrait of Emotions 2
Acrylic On Unstretched Canvas
30 × 35 cm
R2 200
Portrait of Emotions 2 is an expressive study of a face, built from broad, palette-knife strokes on a pale, neutral ground. Cool whites and soft blues sweep across the head, broken by accents of plum, deep red and black around the eyes and hair. The features are suggested rather than drawn, so the figure seems to surface from the paint and hold the viewer with a calm, searching gaze.
Julie Tugwell keeps her handling loose and physical here, scraping and layering acrylic so the marks stay visible and alive. The largely cool, muted palette gives the work a still, reflective quality, while the sparing touches of red bring warmth and focus to the centre of the face. The surrounding raw canvas keeps the composition open and airy, letting the head breathe.
From her ongoing Portrait of Emotions series, this piece has a quiet, contemporary presence. Its soft blues and pale tones would settle easily into a calm, neutral interior, a bedroom, study or gallery-style wall, bringing a sense of introspection and understated character without overwhelming the space around it.
Style
Julie Tugwell is a contemporary South African artist whose work shares qualities with expressive, painterly traditions, favouring energetic brushwork and an emotional response to her subject over strict realism. In her figurative pieces she pursues mood and inner feeling rather than exact likeness, letting faces emerge from gestural, knife-worked marks. Whether working in bold colour or a restrained, largely tonal palette, she captures the atmosphere and vitality of a subject, creating original artworks that bring warmth, character and considered sophistication to contemporary interiors.
Please note: Images are provided as a guide to the artwork’s size and style. As each original painting is photographed under different lighting conditions and viewed on different screens, colours may vary slightly from the original artwork.
