Maryanna

In this monumental portrait Bly Pope depicts his grandmother, Maryanna, at age 90, the year before she died. With astonishing photographic precision he draws her aging face and mind—scrutinizing her wrinkled flesh, her coarse, whitened hair, her ailing eyes, and her calm composure as age threatens her very being. For the artist his grandmother’s face “represents unconventional beauty as well as nobility and defiance in the face of mortality.” In his portraits and nature drawings and paintings, Bly Pope seeks out the ordinary, the overlooked, the banal details of life, which he sees as worthy of close examination and artistic expression.