Fr. Nguyen, a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, was born in the country, Vietnam, and moved to the United States in the very late 1970s. In 1995, he was admitted into the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at the University of Norte Dame. His current piece “Drawing/Painting TIME ” captures the portraits of a plethora of people, dismissing any specific demographic.
My first impression of the work is that each portrait seems carefully detailed and painted in a way that seems very warm and amiable. The artwork seems like a documentation of human life.
My eyes are drawn to how the portraits were placed together. They were very organized and charted very well. Vertical and Horizontal lines. They are sized consistently throughout the piece.
The artist seems to be trying to relate people to each other. Documenting that each person, no matter the circumstances, is subject to change, growth, and decay, but also each person experiences this phenomenon differently.
I feel that this representation of human life feels a bit too mundane for my taste, but yet again I am a design major, which may contribute to my taste. The uniformity throws me off.