Throughout history, the human face has been an endless source of fascination and inspiration for artists and non-artists alike. Consequently, the challenge of creating something new and exciting in the popular, often abused, and (given the conceptual orientation of today's art scene) somewhat out-of-favor genre of realistic portraiture, would be difficult for most artists. Thus it comes as a delightful surprise that San Diego painter Vicki Walsh, a recent MFA graduate from the San Francisco Art Institute and devotee of all things facial, has produced for her first solo exhibition a body of work that is insightful and memorable.

Walsh's fifteen years experience as a forensic medical illustrator has served her well. Working in a polished, hyper-realistic style that emphasizes and magnifies imperfection, Walsh's painstakingly glazed and rendered oil on birch panel images seemingly delve beneath the surface and are a potent antidote to our culture's obsession with perfection, youth, and beauty. Nowhere is this more evident than in the artist's large and devastating self-portrait reproduced on this postcard.

Among the most striking and quirky aspects of Walsh's exhibition is a series of sixteen portraits of men with bald or shaved heads. Drawn from all strata of society, the collective impact of this cross-section of humanity is extraordinary. - M. Lugo