The subjects of Mary Borgman’s larger-than-life charcoal portraits at Ann Nathan almost leap off the Mylar: her marks are forceful, and small details–like a cocked head–make each subject psychologically distinct. Formerly an interpreter for the deaf, Borgman has long been interested in physical expressions. Beginning at 18, she worked four summers at camps for disabled children. “Each kid had such odd quirks,” she says. “I enjoyed figuring them out to know how to comfort and please them. One boy I could calm down only by flipping playing cards against his scalp. I was learning the same skills that I later used in my portraits, how to be sensitive to little cues in body language and subtleties of facial expression.” She’s been fascinated by American Sign Language since she first observed it as a girl: “It’s visual and kinetic. You express with your whole body in a way that I can’t do with words.” Though she’d been drawing since early childhood, after graduating with a degree in graphic communication she married and stopped drawing, working at various jobs before enrolling in a two-year program in deaf communications.
