A Piece of Work

Figure in Black Cap, oil painting by Ray Donley

The young man is beautiful. His porcelain-white, almost-bloodless skin quietly pierces the painting's somber reds and black. Shadows mask most of his face, making it impossible to fully gauge his expression, but there seems to be a dim smile curling on the corner of his lips as well as a vague anxiety clustering on his brow. What are his thoughts, exactly? What expression is hidden in the fine yet dimly lit architecture of his face?

It's this combination of inscrutability and aristocratic beauty that seduces the viewer of Ray Donley's Figure in Black Cap, in the same way that da Vinci's portraits of nobility captured viewers of their day. Donley is what is known as a New Old Master, newly uncovering the subtleties and mysteries of old-style oil painting method for a modern audience. And a master he is; the surfaces of his pieces are thick, slick, saturated with paint, and although his strokes seem imprecise and almost careless at close range, his paintings strike one as detailed and dreamily realistic from a distance, like a mildly blurred photo. Perhaps the strongest element of Donley's "Figure" series, though, is his fearless use of chiaroscuro. The depth of shadow pervading Figure in Black Cap gives the stark white of the man's skin and collar the visual force of lightning in a black sky, while illuminating very little of the figure's inner environment. Donley conjures vaguely vampiric nobility in his "Figure" series, combining a familiar form of portraiture with a sinister and strangely modern pallor.