Bleach 

Curator: Welcome. We are standing before Sarah Joncas' "Bleach," an acrylic painting offering a compelling portrait in cool, ethereal tones. Editor: Whoa. It hits you, right? The overwhelming sense of… floating? Drowning? She looks almost porcelain, vulnerable in all that blue. Makes you want to reach out. Curator: Absolutely. The figure’s partial submersion immediately evokes themes of cleansing, purification, and perhaps even emotional submersion—all loaded topics for portraiture that historically prioritizes a certain image of power and prosperity. Editor: Purifying or obliterating, maybe? The title itself, "Bleach," adds a sinister edge. It could refer to stripping away color, emotion, even identity. Are those tears, or just water droplets clinging to her face? Beautiful and unsettling at the same time. It really messes with you. Curator: The ambiguity is key. Notice the delicate handling of light, almost photographic in its realism. Joncas here skillfully employs those techniques to both attract and unsettle the viewer. We might think of the contemporary art world’s larger tendency towards blurring distinctions between realism and surrealism, and the challenge this poses to traditional modes of visual representation. Editor: True, it's a contemporary spin on the melancholic portrait—flipping that historical idea of portraying nobility and wealth. There's something stark and raw here, almost defiant. Makes me wonder if this isn’t a statement about beauty standards and the pressure to conform…to bleach oneself, so to speak, of individuality. The cool tones add to that emotion as well. Curator: It's an apt observation that relates directly to a core element of the artist’s context in which identity became not so much as something innate, but something endlessly and carefully negotiated, constructed, and reconstructed—like an artwork. Editor: Totally. Anyway, it definitely sparked something in me—this image and these thoughts. Made me wanna make my own kind of splash! Curator: And for me, it really highlights the ways a portrait can hold up a mirror to contemporary society, reflecting our anxieties back at us in ways both beautiful and deeply disturbing.