by MATTHEW WOODLEY

Back in the olden days, a "blood harmony" was a common hillbilly vocal style that came from the melding of voices from members of the same family. Through song, separate people formed a melodious whole - much like they do through paint in Kristi Ropeleski's series of the same name. Though it ain't genes or shirts that these folk share. In creating her kindred, Ropeleski took away what distinguishing features she could, leaving her bigger-than-life models standing in the buff and staring right back.

Blood Harmony is a sort of study in Plateau anthropology, a standardized lineup of the kind of late-20-something suspects you'd easily find at the Bifteck (which you might have, since she worked there for years and many of them are her good friends). The series follows a few basic conventions: each painting is born of a topless waist-up photo that Ropeleski took of the models against a blank wall with compulsory eye contact.

"It's almost like an experiment in my lab," Ropeleski muses, "seeing what people are going to do and how they react. The painting is assimilating the results. I'm seeing what happens when I put everything on an even ground. I'm displaying men and women in a very similar way and seeing how people react to that kind of display of their sexual identity. Maybe it will make them uncomfortable, maybe it won't, but I hope it does something."

People probe

Portraiture (hence people) has always been Ropeleski's thing. "In high school I took courses in photography at the Saidye Bronfman Centre," she says. "I was always doing photo shoots with my friends and wasn't really interested in doing landscapes or anything else." She then went on to study art at Dawson and finish a BFA at Concordia. Since then she's worked on commission and as a designer. In the past year the 26 year old has spent most of her waking hours in her home studio. "I took a year sabbatical to pursue painting full-time and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made," says Ropeleski. "I've learned so much about the technical aspects of painting that I could never have learned if I hadn't taken a year to work like 60 hours a week just doing it."

Blood Harmony is built on this combination of technique and people curiosity. Ropeleski captures the intimate moments she had with her models, who, through their facial expressions and body language, all say something of their being put on the spot. It comes across in different shades, from relaxed to awkward to slightly standoffish, every person conveying an intense presence. "I didn't want the models to have a submissive stance as if they were being viewed by people in vulnerable situation, since they're nude from the waist up," explains Ropeleski. "I didn't want them to give up too much. I wanted to be able to maintain a bit of their individuality and I thought that having eye contact made them less submissive and created an interesting tension in the subject position."

Bashful boys

Many of the models came to the Blood Harmony vernissage last weekend, recognizable even in their clothes but with a "Yes, I'm a model" button as backup. On the spot again, some posed in front of their likeness while others, sunken into the gallery's old couches, kept a lower profile. Ropeleski says that comfort levels varied through the whole experience ('some people still can't look at the paintings of themselves"), noting that it's more often the men who were shy with their shirts off. "My female models were a lot more comfortable with the nudity," she says, "which is funny considering they have a bit more at stake in that they have breasts."

Maybe it's because men don't know why they have nipples - though Ropeleski has a more developed theory. "I've debated it with a lot of people but I believe that it's a lot more difficult to be a man in terms of your body than a woman right now," she says. "You know how it goes: women have always been really sexualized in terms of marketing, feeding our bodies back to us, that kind of thing, whereas with men it's only becoming more popular right now. It's been so long that our bodies have been objectified and there are a lot of different ways for us to present ourselves as sexual beings or viable bodies, but for men it's a lot more narrow."

Intimate encounters

The idea of image and control is a big part of Blood Harmony's exploration. "Something that was always in the back of my mind was that idea of loss and the potential for an objectification of identity through intimate encounters," she explains. Her two double-headed-figure paintings in the series symbolize her concept. One is a self-portrait of Ropeleski kissing herself, one of her heads turned to the viewer with a glaring eye. The other is half-male, half-female with both heads fighting away from each other - Ropeleski's lighthearted take on what she calls the "loss of self in coupledom."

Blood Harmony's identity investigation has come a long way, but it's nowhere near completion in Ropeleski's mind. "I'm planning on expanding it or even tripling it, so hopefully I can include a very diverse representation of people," she says. "But as it stands it's pretty interesting having all these people from the same area and the same clique and seeing what happens when you take off their shirts."

Blood Harmony shows at Zeke's Gallery
(3955 St-Laurent) until Feb. 15

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