Marvin by Beth Yarnelle Edwards

The portraits of Beth Yarnelle Edwards explore the relationships "between people, their living spaces, and their possessions." Many portrait artists strive to portray their subject's psychology through expression, gesture, and other hints of demeanor. In taking her subjects' environments as another level of rhetorical expression, Beth demonstrates the ways we all use our personal items to reinforce the stories we want to tell about ourselves.

Beth collaborates with her subjects in recognizing and enhancing these emblematic, if not quite fictive, aspects of their personal settings. She says,

I seek out intersections of the mythic and mundane. As I attempt to reveal some basic truth about my subjects, I'm attracted to the peculiar or surprising. This can take many forms, ranging from humor to visual quirkiness to a sense of universality, or even the uncanny.

There is much more environmental portraiture at Beth's website.