Portrait as Landscape: A Journey Through Colour and Form with Geoff Farnsworth

Peach Woman, 2017 oil on canvas 12” x 12” $800

More Than a Portrait: From Likeness to Lyrical Abstraction

At first glance, Peach Woman appears as a portrait—a study of a female figure rendered in oil on canvas. But as you linger, the work begins to unravel. It reveals itself not simply as a depiction of a woman, but as a kind of landscape: a terrain of brushwork, gesture, colour, and emotion.

This painting began with a live model named Cree—but as Geoff Farnsworth layered, scraped, and reworked the surface, the figure became something more fluid and intuitive. What started as a portrait gradually transformed into a visual meditation, where form and identity dissolve into rhythm, colour, and mood. The final image retains a whisper of its source while embracing a dreamlike ambiguity—an invitation to see beyond appearance and into the emotional architecture of the painting itself.

The Artist’s Signature Approach

Farnsworth, a Canadian painter with roots in classical training and expressive abstraction, has long resisted the boundaries between realism and imagination. His portraits are not just images of people; they are experiences. Forms dissolve into soft chaos, colours vibrate with intentional dissonance, and the subject seems to emerge and retreat within the same breath.

“Peach Woman” is a powerful example of this. The figure—delicate yet firm, present yet drifting—sits at the heart of an explosion of marks and painterly atmosphere. Like a spring bloom in motion, her face is both fixed and unfixed, outlined by a flurry of strokes that pulse with energy. The painting is less a statement and more an unfolding—a poetic meditation on beauty, and the passage of time.

Photo by Chantal Dividson

A Practice Rooted in Exploration

This painterly fluidity is signature to Farnsworth, who trained at the Art Students League of New York and developed his voice at the intersection of observation and improvisation. His work is informed by life drawing, but never bound by it. He allows each piece to evolve on its own terms—layered, spontaneous, and rich with psychological presence. Born in Kimberley, British Columbia and now based in St. Catharines, Ontario, Farnsworth has built an international exhibition history while staying deeply connected to his local art community. His paintings—whether portraits, animal studies, or abstract compositions—offer collectors more than aesthetic satisfaction. They offer space: space for reflection, for story, for the viewer’s own imaginative wanderings.

Why This Work Matters

Peach Woman may be modest in size (12 x 12 inches), but it contains multitudes. It is a painting that hums with inner life, revealing more with every return. It is portrait as gesture, portrait as memory, portrait as terrain. And for the collector who understands that a great artwork isn’t just seen but experienced—this piece is waiting.