Life Interrupted by Judy Schavrien

Life Interrupted by Judy Schavrien

Against the backdrop of a world in crisis, Dr. Judy Schavrien, an artist and a psychotherapist specializing in trauma, writes and paints these portraits of life interrupted. They are portraits in a Late Style, and Late Style artists have had a near encounter with death, whether sheerly through aging or through some trauma. She begins, in the preface, with the story of her own life interrupted. In a midnight mugging, she was shot in the face. Then she traveled the globe to find healing. Now, in this book, she portrays artists, dancers, refugees, cancer survivors, celebrities and even figures from myth-all viewed in a Late Style light.

There are 68 edgy and vibrant portraits, 58 of them in gorgeous full color. There is a portrait of Alice in Wonderland with her tyrant, the Red Queen; and an updated Beauty, face-to-face with her Beast. There is a loving caricature of Rachel Maddow and a Dorian Gray reveal of Donald Trump. These figures depart from the old version of a portrait figure-well-shielded by costume, rank, entourage of wife, children, and family pets. Instead they present themselves naked-permeable to what happens all around-diaphanous to a dangerous but surprisingly beautiful world.

The book is both traditional and on the cusp. Regarding her media, the portraits resemble woodcuts, etchings, watercolors or oils, but many of them are in fact created digitally. Where gender is concerned, there is the feminist project to update portrayals-strong women, active in their gaze, men with an artist's receptivity. In addition, in works like Jen, Sculptor, or Myself as a Man, there is gender fluidity.

Although these portraits are about the bare, forked beast, the fragile human, they are not always somber. Intensely alive and immediate, they often unfurl in gorgeous color, proclaiming the strength of survivors.

Schavrien has received 15 awards, national and international, for her work in the arts. She was chosen to be featured out of 50,000 international artists on the Imagekind platform. The life experience that brought her to focus on survivors includes her decades as a psychotherapist for trauma survivors and her recent work as Artist-in-Residence for R.E.A.L. (Refugee Education and Learning).