An article in Hyperallergic talks about how “the Brooklyn-based painter’s intimate portraits of her mostly queer artist friends play with gender fluidity, sexual ambiguity, and a collaborative creative process.”
“Dufresne (CRF 2018) is known for tableaux vivants that mash up eroticism and mythological creatures. The 33 portraits featured in Just My Type: Angela Dufresne, on view at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, further embody this hybridity, playing with gender fluidity, sexual ambiguity, and myriad contradictions within type.
These intimate, large-scale oil-on-canvas portraits depict Dufresne’s loved ones, including her partner and her community of mostly queer artist friends. While she references the Western art canon, with nods to Velazquez, Goya, and Gainsborough, Dufresne shakes up portraiture tradition and upends the conventional artist-subject power dynamic by working in collaboration with her subjects. She asks her sitters to provide prompts, dictate their backdrop, and determine when the work is finished. She regards painting as a co-creative process.”