Samantha Tidbeck is a Portraitist who is producing a startling body of work. The portraits she is developing for her solo show to open at Cutcliffe Gallery on 10 December 2001 are often disembodied. Her process is a combination of chance couplings, temperature and the puzzle of the gaze. In these portraits she plays with you as much as the drawn and photographed portraits that she picks by chance from her hat.

Sometimes her subjects are caught facing each other or in an intimate pose as they are drawn from the hat, however subjects are often stripped of relationship with each other and in essence confront. This habit leaves the portraits relationship with the viewer.

Her work remains a puzzle as it offers us combinations of people either staring directly at us or talking and being intimate amongst themselves. We are aware of our response to the gaze of a solitary figure who meets our eyes, just as we can feel that the "pressure is off" once three of them are engaged with each other. Our relationship with the subjects is what fascinates Tidbeck and it is this unknown quantity that makes this body of work so engaging.

"The way in which I applied it (the principle of surprise in chance meeting) was drawing from a collection of faces and portraits that I've taken photos of or drawn over the past ten years. I drew 2 or 3 out of a hat and then created the portraits out of those chance couplings. Made drawings, then worked to make the paintings."

"The way in which I have been painting has been largely influenced in my study with Charlie Sheard." Sheard is an abstract painter for whom all roads lead to Titian.

He has developed a teaching technique modelled on the technique of Titian. It involves building up a tonal underpainting of Venetian Red and Lead White, followed by the application of fine layers of pigment that are often translucent. The result is more luminosity and depth then one painted directly and the effect is further deepened by the application of varnish.

This is the first large body of work Tidbeck has produced using this kind of technique. Tidbeck is on an adventurous path, juggling many unknowns. Amongst these are: the refinement of the technique that she considers herself not to have mastered, plus the questions prompted by her subject matter.

Tidbeck has been known to produce wonderful still lifes and sees herself drawn to that subject matter in the near future. But this show had to be produced first. This body of work almost exclusively features faces and hands. Tidbeck feels portraiture must be tackled as important subject matter, especially the relationship that exists between the subject, subjects and the viewer. Their setting, the trappings of the world peopled by her subjects, is peripheral, or painted in a peripheral way, almost filing up the gaps. For example, picture two young men against a tiled wall. Ones eye roves over their faces, though the tiles denote another environment clearly. However, this other world, is a place we penetrate. We are being looked back at from that other environment, we are aware of a presence in that environment. We enter it by meeting the subject's eyes.

Tidbeck was particularly inspired by a book by Julian Bell, "What is Painting", He mentions the primal attraction of the face, an attraction so strong that we always look for a face in any image. Tidbeck likes the idea of this human habit or survival mechanism. We can give into our compulsion to stare at her faces completely. The dynamic of what happens when we indulge our habit is further complicated by the fact that we perceive ourselves to be looked back at. The dynamic raises the question, what if the one being looked at is looking back? Tidbeck feels that even though the portraits are not alive, they take the place of persons, act as a proxy and draw our reactions out of us. One is being looked at, the other is looking.

"A lot of it is a complete mystery for me." Tidbeck

Tidbeck paints what she does not know, just as some of the faces sometimes evolve into new identities as she works. There is a wonderful interaction with the process as her craft is informed by events beyond her original intention. Even some of the portraits on this page might have evolved beyond recognition by the time her show begins.

We are left with the sense of two worlds meeting as the work asks us about our own uncertainty. How do we fit into these groups, or relate to each portrait? You are the third party whether a portrait reaches towards you, with an out-stretched, disproportionate hand, or completely ignores you, exclusively engaged with the other figure in the painting. The paintings play with our ideas of perception making us consciously aware of our interaction.

Tidbeck feels that trios are a difficult matter to deal with. She lets her guard down for a moment to consider her own familiar trio as an only child with two parents. She is fascinated and affords her audience the opportunity to participate in the questioning experience.