PHOTOGRAPH BY ELKIN CAÑAS
Milixa Morón
Milixa Morón Takes a Long Look Back at the Masters by Karen Parr-Moody
F
or centuries, portraiture subjects sat, backs ramrod straight, in a breezy studio as the artist enjoyed a rare moment of intimacy with the elite personages. Working in this close situation, these
painters depicted the ruff around a duke’s neck, the mysterious gaze of a queen, or the coy smile of an heiress. Milixa Morón, a Venezuelan realist painter, renders her subjects in oil with techniques derived from such portraiture artists. These date back to the painters of the nineteenth century and then go even further back, all the way to the Renaissance masters. “I try to use the best of every period,” Morón says. Her glazing technique is taken from that used during the Renaissance; she also prepares her canvases as did artists of that period. From the Baroque period, Morón took the style of using intense light and deep shadows.
Ipazia Studying Perfection, 2011, Oil on linen, 31.5" x 21.7"
The skin of each subject possesses an exceptional luminescence, which helps when one is portraying goddesses, as Morón often does. She attributes this to her use of white lead paint, the principal white that has long been used in NashvilleArts.com
February 2014 | 61