Mirror, Mirror

Ivory, sienna, honey, umber, almond, amber, bronze, chocolate, olive, copper. These colors offer endless possibilities on a painter’s palette. What happens when we encounter them as the way we identify another person? Through this work, Cantor asks us to consider how we can admire a color in paint while allowing that same color on skin to become a source of prejudice. Drawing from Greek and Roman portraiture, Renaissance artists, Picasso, and Van Gogh, Cantor works with live models to explore the presence and inner life of each sitter. The space between artist and model becomes an intimate place where both people participate in the making of an image. For Cantor, this exchange is essential: a photograph cannot replace the experience of sitting together, observing, and being observed. It is a conversation without words.

Growing up in New York City during segregation, Cantor was forced to confront the uncomfortable truth of how race shapes our daily lives—where we belong, how we are treated, and how we see one another. Those experiences continue to inform her work and the questions she brings to portraiture. “Racism has lurked through my life like an unhealed sore,” Cantor shares. “Looking at each other takes courage.”

Mirror, Mirror invites us into that conversation. The drawings in this exhibition are busts of our contemporaries nodding to history. The paintings are framed in gold leaf, emphasizing each human as a special being. Through the particular colors, expressions, and presence of each individual, the exhibition asks us to look closely and consider everything we bring, consciously and unconsciously, to the act of seeing.