“What is it about this faceless person that makes me want to get to know them more? Each piece starts as a sketch with no idea of how it will evolve or who will ultimately emerge as I work and rework the form, exploring texture, color and feelings.”

  - Joni Maloney

Joni Maloney is a Michigan-based artist whose work explores the human condition through  abstract-realist portraiture. Each could be the first sentence of a story, quickly revealing something familiar and essential, but with an open-ended quality that imagines conversation of the why, the how, the what of that moment. Faceless yet not featureless, Maloney’s figures have an immediacy that invites lingering to feel the emotions their body language conveys. While celebrating individuality, we as individual viewers universally know, have been or could be this person in a moment in time. While in some cultures there is belief that a photograph or portrait “steals” the subject’s spirit, Maloney’s characters are anything but spiritless, their direct and open gaze an opportunity for us to look more closely to discover them.