Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon Portland Community College

North Star by Mark Andres

  • Title: North Star
  • Artist: Mark Andres
  • Medium: Acrylic on canvas
  • Size: 48"h x 72" w
  • Donor: On loan from artist
  • Campus: Rock Creek
  • Location: B7/2 SLC

This work was made as a public demonstration of figure painting at the ArtBeat festival at Rock Creek in 2014 under the Banyan tree in B3. The main model was Megan Baron, who appears in three faceless poses in foreground – standing, planting and reading surrounded by vegetation and the sea. A second model, Jameesha Walker, who was late to arrive to the session, only appears in the left side, standing awkwardly in an institutional space. The placement of the three white and faceless figures in the foreground and the black model with a face in the distance was an intuitive choice at the time, but could underline the way a person of color may be marginalized in group settings and to whom the privileged may seem interchangeably faceless. To navigate such a situation a pole star or North star may be needed.