Borrowing Old Master techniques, Ross Chisholm recreates a range of images, from 18th-century

British society portraits and genre scenes to 1970s vacation snapshots sourced from flea market images found at flea markets. However, by interventions and formal manipulations—such as injecting geometric abstraction (OP 2000, 2009) combining figures from different centuries (Crisis, 2011), or even updating a noblewoman’s fashion with 1980s punk accents (Lady Sheffield, 2009)—Chisholm unsettlingly distorts viewers’ historical and narrative associations. “Chisholm is not creating a pastiche… [the] works do not turn on irony,” critic Dawn-Michelle Baud wrote. “The found imagery is transformed with results that are expressive and fresh.” As of late, Chisholm continues to work in this vein, but with a newly developed painterly style that employs a darker, more muted palette and abstracts his subjects to the point that they remain only vaguely figurative.” (artsy.net)