Sara Birns’ paintings interrogate both the paradigm and parable of human physiognomy. Simultaneously visceral, uncanny and sympathetic, her portraits tamper with the cues we usually use to recognise one another, obscured to falsify any sense of apparent familiarity. Typically working with images taken of friends and family, her amalgamated faces and forms are composed from several figures – sometimes even human and animal – with flesh and feathers, wings and paws.

Rendered with luminosity and precision, Birns utilises Old Master techniques, building images from layers of meticulous underpainting and careful glazing. Working in paint, pastel, pencil and most recently watercolour, Birns’ ability to control her chosen medium allows her to capture even the most minute details of her subject; characterised with dilated pores, creeping veins and gleaming teeth. Each and every feature of her subject is devoted an equal level of hyper-realistic execution and having now introduced multi-figure compositions, Birns enlivens a multitude of characters in a hybridisation of image that is even more confronting and complex. This fusion of character, of self and other, nods to the interconnectedness of beings, as people, animals, or other, and suggests that ultimately their entanglement is inevitable.