This is brilliant Belgian artist Thierry Bonnaffe

From the seventeenth- through the nineteenth-centuries, meaning all the way to the the Impressionists, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France privileged the drawing of outlines and contours--a technique inherited from the Renaissance masters-- as opposed to focusing upon blocks of color as a way of teaching painting. The implicit assumption behind this hierarchy was that color was found in nature whereas outlining a human form was an acquired skill. Whether or not we agree with this claim, Thierry Bonnaffe's "Cindy" shows us how impressive a painting can be when an artist captures the essence of both color and form. Cindy's body is painted with the soft contours inherited from the techniques of the Renaissance artists. The body is fluid form, revealed through minimal outlines and a sure touch. The shading is not the performed through the contrast of specks of color that has become familiar to us since the Impressionists, but in the older style of chiaroscuro and sfumato--the gradual shading that leaves outlines just enough to the imagination to render them more expressive and interesting.

Only a few curved lines reveal that the young woman's troubled emotions belie her repose. To complement the form, the color is equally understated. A fire-hot, agitated red --and that's all--bathes her body in a luminous warmth. In the way it conveys the human form and its moods so minimalistically, through such lightness of color and touch, this painting is exquisite.

Professor Claudia Moscovici