Detail, depth and slow, careful reworking.

That’s the qualities that make Chloe Neath’s startlingly realistic portraits so arresting.
“The aim of my artworks is to be accurate, but also to capture and evoke the life and experience of the person in the portrait,” she says.

Those who saw her exhibitions in Bendigo and Castlemaine, and at her studio for the Newstead Open Studio weekend, certainly found Chloe’s work powerful and striking.

When she illustrated Nick Ravenswood’s The Baby Farmer, a dark tale about tragedy and revenge set in a Victorian-era orphanage, her interest in what Nick called the “delicately sensual … singular beauty and otherness” of people and stories.

While the gold leaf and charcoal of her portraits does invite aesthetic admiration, this is not pretty work. It defies being dismissed as decoration, with its intensity.

When you look at these faces, they might catch you staring, as you try to figure out what’s the story behind the people depicted. Chloe has the power to both appeal and provoke.

For Loddon Valley Arts, Chloe’s work will be installed at the magnificent, heritage, grandly ambitious colonial East Loddon Woolshed. There, the huge dark wooden beams, the floor weathered by millions of sheep, the machinery of the hard shearing business – all form an atmospheric backdrop to these images.

She’s bringing, too, copies of her Baby Farmer book, one for those whose taste runs to the macabre.

As Nick Ravenswood writes about The Baby Farmer: “Chloe Neath’s work is extraordinary and speaks so eloquently for itself… you will find within the layers of Chloe’s beautifully detailed artwork that there are man devils at work. Whether those devils induce obsession or euphoria you can be sure that dedication and damned hard work are the divine elements that brought them screaming out into the light.”