Devon Govoni, a Boston-based artist, curator and art therapist, paints in an engaging, expressionist style that gives her portraits and still lives an energetic immediacy. Her subjects' gazes and poses, the positions of the objects she portrays all make for paintings that are virtually confrontational, arresting the viewer's eyes with intimate portrayals that alternately seem tinged with anger and sadness. Govoni uses her brush and palette to heighten and qualify these emotive tendencies, calmer, reflective subjects portrayed with smaller strokes and paler colors, others infused with strong feelings by dripped, scraped stronger, darker colors.

The resulting aesthetic melds insightful portraits of Govoni's subjects and a psychological profile of the artist herself. This expressionism reveals as much about the figures seen as the subject seeing them, offering a portrait of an artist who's both impassioned and self-conscious, strong and tempered. Devon Govoni transmits this humanist edge in her work through the redemptive light in which she portrays her subjects.