Summary: Anne Goodyear, curator at NPG, discusses Jim Torok's self-portrait featured in the temporary exhibition "Portraiture Now: Communities." Jim Torok grew up in Indiana but moved to New York to attend graduate school at Brooklyn College. Although he has worked in several genres, Torok is best known for his small-scale portraits. Painted with oil on panel, they raise intriguing questions about identity and the impermanence of human life. As Torok explains, one of the fundamental issues his work addresses is the problem of likeness. "How do we know a face?" Torok asks. "How do you get a picture of a person to look like that person?" He begins each portrait by taking a series of photographs of his subjects, but his paintings are not photographic. Time spent with his subject is important in these works, which can take up to a year to complete, a duration seemingly out of proportion to their size. Recorded at NPG, June 3, 2010. Image: Self-portrait by Jim Torok / Oil on panel, 2008 / Baron and Budd, P.C. / Copyright Jim Torok
