Portraits & figures

People look at people. A portrait will out-compete every other picture in a room for attention, and the 48 works in this edit — painted portraits, photographic studies and figurative mixed media — should be placed on that understanding rather than in spite of it.

Which means a portrait belongs on a focal wall, not in peripheral space. Hung to the side of a room it will keep pulling the eye sideways all evening; hung as the thing the room faces, it does exactly the job you wanted.

Hang a portrait so the subject's eyes land at roughly standing eye level, about 150 cm from the floor. Higher and the figure looks down at the room, which reads as grand or cold depending on the picture; lower and it feels like it is sliding off the wall.

Then check which way the subject is facing and give that side more room. A figure looking left with a wall edge close on the left feels boxed in; the same print shifted 20 cm right feels composed. This costs nothing and is the single most noticeable improvement you can make to a portrait's placement.

The painted and mixed-media portraits here carry visible surface — brush direction, texture, layered marks — and hold up in a room with strong daylight, where the texture picks up the light.

The photographic portraits depend on tonal subtlety and are better away from a window that will throw glare across them at one time of day. Every work in this edit is a limited edition of 25 hand-signed by its artist, and the medium is stated on each product page.

Framing follows the same split. A painted portrait can take a warmer wood and a narrower mat, since the surface itself supplies the richness. A photographic one wants a wide mat and a restrained frame, so nothing around it competes with the tonal range inside the image. Sizes in this edit run 40×30 – 60×40 cm.