Exploration, transformation and change are the defining forces of Jorg Dubin’s art. Long recognized for his darkly narrative paintings chronicling the human condition, Dubin has abandoned pictorial narrative to concentrate on portraiture. While his highly detailed, figurative paintings often reflected inner turmoil and disillusionment, Dubin’s portraits evidence personal maturation and continuing       creative growth.
 Yet, his portraiture is as rich in content as his earlier narrative works. He found that through portraying a face or a full figure, he can reveal the essence of his subjects and thus perhaps a universal human truth. By focusing on his subjects’ unique characteristics, he creates a mood and elicits a definite emotional response in viewers.
Dubin paints with a loose brush but keeps his palette subtle. Figures and faces are well articulated yet leave room for viewers to form their own impressions. His use of negative space along with mastery of light and shadow makes surfaces    intriguing and seductive.
Throughout his compositions, subjects are often isolated, bereft of narrative background or embellishment.  At times one will find a prop such as a suitcase, chair or a musical instrument, but never enough material to decode his images. Once again, viewers must reach their own conclusions. “White Boots,” for example, is a portrait of a woman lost in deep thought.  A guitar leaning against the wall suggests that she is a musician. Dubin, instead focusing on her physical presence alone, conveys the rapture a creative artist experiences through self-expression.
This attention to the subject’s inner being makes Dubin’s work appealing and intriguing. We are not just looking at the image of a person, we are looking at passion and emotion or, if need be, a lack of either.
Dubin arrived at portraiture via an arduous but invigorating creative journey. In this he follows a venerable tradition followed by so-called old masters like Peter Paul Rubens, Frans Hals, Hans Holbein or Jan Van Eyck. In more contemporary terms, Dubin’s work is comparable with that of some European expressionists who used the face or figure to illuminate their subjects’ strengths and weaknesses along with their own.
 The last two decades brought on a revival of realism and figurative painting, followed by a renewed interest in abstraction. Portraiture was, by all appearance, relegated into a closet of sentimentalism and kitsch. However, while staying firmly within the realm of post-modernism, Dubin has elevated portraiture to a logical extension of, once again venerated, figurative painting.  As his latest work attests, he maintains his place in the avant-garde by taking inspiration from the past and incorporating it into the ethos of the contemporary.

          — Daniella B. Walsh

Daniella Walsh is a journalist/writer specializing in visual art and related subjects.