In the visual arts, a portrait is defined as a likeness of a person that is painted, drawn or engraved, often painted from real life and focusing on the face.

Viewing portraits in an art gallery or museum space is a very intimate experience in a world that is increasingly global, digital and isolating. The viewer physically approaches an image of another person on a gallery wall and examines the likeness in some detail, making the acquaintance of this two-dimensional stranger on some level, getting to know him or her perhaps as well as some neighbors. It is a physical, tactile experience because the image often shows the mark of the artist's pen or brush. It is very different experience from that of viewing a profile picture on a flat dull computer screen.

Portraiture has slowly re-emerged in the past ten years after long being ignored and maligned by the art world. Art scholar Daniel McNeill summarizes contemporary criticism of the genre in his 1998 book, "The Face: A Natural History," stating that, "in art, likeness has developed a reputation as rote and dreary business, face sapped of soul, the mark of the third rater." In the contemporary era, portraiture came to be viewed as simplistic and uninteresting, even mechanical, rendering of likeness.

This view has now shifted and the primary institutions of the art world have begun embracing portraiture once again but the portraits that are relevant today are new and different. Contemporary re-imaginings of the portrait are a complete departure from the historical tradition of meticulously realistic and idealized images of (usually wealthy) paying subjects in static established poses. Artists today are taking portraiture in meaningful and expressive new directions.

A new portraiture exhibition, titled "People You May Know," opens at the Durham Arts Council this Friday. The artists featured in the exhibition are all local to the Triangle area and have varied approaches to portraiture in either media or style or simply in their choices of unique individuals as subjects. The subjects are all recognizable members of our community presented in each artist's distinctive style and the exhibition as a whole reveals interesting, beautiful and often overlooked people, people you may have even seen in passing but never had an opportunity to examine closely.

The artists in the exhibition include: Daniel Allegrucci, Dave Alsobrooks, Maria Brubeck, Jacob Cooley, Alia El-Bermani, Titus Heagins, Dipika Kohli, Beverly McIver and Marianita Stevans. Many of these artists are included in significant regional and national collections ranging from the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Nasher Museum of Art to the collections of the Smithsonian and Ford Motor Company.

Get to know our diverse community more intimately. Visit the exhibition and join us for the artists' reception on October 15 from 5 to 7 p.m. "People You May Know" will be on view from Oct. 8 through Jan. 9 at the Durham Arts Council's historic building at 120 Morris St. in downtown Durham. For more information visit www.durhamarts.org.