Aron Belka
“Ana Hernandez,” oil on canvas, 2018
“Ana Hernandez,” oil on canvas, 2018
The faces that Aron Belka likes to paint are the ones on the ground—no one famous, the kind of people who are quietly integrated into society, easily passed over, yet remarkable just the same. He likes to paint them large, enormous, even—several feet tall—forcing passersby to really look at them, to see. In Jacqueline DeRobertis-Braun’s feature story, “How do People See People?”, Belka cites the digital age’s overwhelm of imagery, of faces, as an example of fragmented reality, the resistance to spending time within a singular moment. In response, he forces confrontation with realism, portraits that from afar look as though they speak and breathe—but he fragments them. Up close to the monumental works, all you see is brushstrokes, abstraction.
In his 2018 collection, Represent: Depicting Creatives in the 504, Belka asked the world to look at the artists of New Orleans, twenty individuals who were shaping the city’s contemporary art scene. Painter, printmaker, and sculptor Ana Hernandez, featured in this portrait, has been a working artist in the city for almost twenty years. She has described her work as a contribution to a movement of reimagining a world that is more just, more honest, and more postured toward healing our planet and each other.
In this issue dedicated to the arts and to artists, we invite you to slow down and really recognize artists like Hernandez, and Belka, and a dozen more. As the beloved chef and accomplished art collector Leah Chase once said, “Looking at a person is just like looking at art. When you look at them, at first you may not understand it all … you have to get to know them.”
