Art Analysis: Family By Reg Narmour

Reg Narmour’s piece titled Family represent a portrait of a full family standing in the blue and red background. This painting is located in the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts. This piece is hanging on the wall and only can be seen from one side. In his painting, Family, Narmour effectively creates the painting’s composition and employs the element of color, and the principle of focal point, to depict the story of a broken family.
The Family painting is watercolor on canvas with dimension 30 x 70 cm. This piece is the representational of full family that consist of father, mother, baby, son, daughter and the dog. They are all standing in the red and blue background with different poses and positions. The daughter is in the

very front with hands on her hips. She has yellow curly hair and face with no eyes. She wears a dress with many colors combinations and pets her dog with red rope. At her back, there are the father, son, and the baby. The father sits the baby on his right hand and holds the son by his left hand. His face has no eyes and mouth. He wears a shirt that has the same color combination as the daughter and dark blue jeans. His right hand is abstracted and seems to be blurrily combined with the son’s left hand. However, his left hand has greater details with fingers that could be easily identified. The son stands on the left of the father. Like the father, the son has no eyes and mouth. His both hands are abstracted with very less details. He wears white hat, blue shirt, and yellow jeans. On the father’s right arm, there is the baby. Unlike the other members of the family, the baby has eyes and mouth with no hair. The baby’s right hand could be identified, but the left hand is abstracted. At the very back of the painting, there is the mother. She has orange hair and face with no mouth and eyes. She wears orange long dress. Her left hand is abstracted and the right hand could not be seen because it is positioned at the back of the father.
The Family conveys the story of the broken family. Even though, all family members in this art work are standing together, but the artist’s depiction and composition in this painting shows that the family is actually not in the harmony condition. All the members of the family, except the baby, has no eyes. Eyes are the windows of the soul. Family members who have no eyes means that he/she only sees the world as a black color. They do not care about somebody else, except their own self. They are individualistic and go with their own justification without listening to other’s perspectives. They are blind and walk with no direction. Furthermore, in his painting, Narmour painted the family members, except the baby and the daughter, with no mouth. This conveys the meaning that there is no effective communication between each member of the family. The way Narmour chose to depict the family’s members with no eyes and mouth expresses the message that there is a huge dissonance within the family. In this piece, Narmour actually shows that there is still a little hope for the family to be re-united again by depicting the baby with eyes and mouth. However, that hope is useless for the time being because the baby cannot talk and express the feeling to other family members.
Narmour uses the element of color to convey the message of the painting. By using element of color, Narmour divided the family members into two different groups. The father, and the daughter wears clothing with combination of grey, black, yellow, red colors and they stands in the red background. The mother and son wear clothing with solid colors and stands on the blue background. The combination of grey, black, yellow, and red on the father’s and the daughter’s clothing and the red background conveys the feelings of anxiety, aggression, and angers. On the other hand, the blue background where the mother and the son stands shows the feelings peace and calm. This different feeling within the art piece conveys the meaning that there are conflicting principles within the family that alters the family’s harmony. In order to emphasize the sense of disharmony, Narmour darkens the value of the color in the transition between the red and blue background. He also uses very dark color at the middle to the bottom of the painting to accentuate the dramatic effect and to deepen the sense of the intense conflict within the family.
Narmour employs the principle of focal point to show the viewer about the culprit behind the broken family.

The focal point of this painting is the head of the daughter. Narmour uses psychological lines in order to show the emphasis of the painting. The psychological line used in this painting is created by the perceptual connection between the daughter and the other member of the family. Even though most of the figure have no eyes, but the gesture of their head shows that they are looking at the daughter’s head. Narmour effectively employs this element in his painting, so when the viewers see this piece, their attention would first go to the daughter’s head. The daughter’s pose (hands on her hips) shows that she is the antagonist actor. This also could be seen by the dark color combination of her clothing and her face. Also, the dog that she pets looks sad and tortured emphasizing the sense of her bad personality. She is the only adult (teen) that has mouth. This means that she is the only person who talks to all family members and become the source information within the family. With that being said, by using focal points, Narmour wants to show to the viewers that the daughter is actually the person who causes all the chaos within the

family.
During face-to-face viewing this art work, the viewer would notice that the texture of the painting is rough. Narmour used impasto technique where he laid the paint on the surface very thickly, so the paint is raised on the surface and the brush strokes in this painting are visible. This may have gone overlooked by viewing a photographic reproduction of this painting. Furthermore, this piece is surrounded by the other watercolor paintings with similar style. This painting is located at the end corner of the room. When the viewer observe this piece, he/she will stand at the very corner of the room, alone with the painting. This would help to enhance the intimacy between the viewers and painting and to help the viewers to obtain the real meaning of the piece and to reflect to their own family. In conclusion, Narmour successfully creates the painting’s composition and employs the element of color and the principle of focal point to depict the story of a broken family in his piece.