Nobody gets to live forever. But perhaps your beauty is so profound, an artist felt compelled to document it. Or perhaps you purchased your shot at immortality and commissioned a portrait. Regardless of why your image has been recorded, the harder step toward immortality is entirely the artist's responsibility - not all portraits are loved and last, changing hands from kin to stranger throughout the ages. So what is it about a portrait that makes it an enduring piece of art?

The temptation of adding a Big Name artist to a collection is often enough to make a piece coveted. But lesser-known art depicting unknown persons have to be pretty incredible to garner the supreme adoration of collector.

So what makes us fall in love with a stranger? Being enamored of a particularly beautiful arrangement of flesh and blood is inevitable, at a café or in line at the bank, but what about an encounter with paint and canvas? What about bronze? How are we so drawn to the motionlessness, enigmatic expressions, the hints at secret worlds behind faces?

When asked how he selects his work, Oxford Gallery owner Jim Hall says, "I'm very eclectic in my tastes. With portraits, you're invariably talking about verisimilitude. But I look for a representation of the character, not just the features." To illustrate, Hall points out the "confident nonchalance" in the gaze of the "Portrait of Francis Noyes" by Edward S. Siebert (who, Hall tells me, moved to Rochester in 1910 to paint the Bausch & Lomb executive's portrait and stayed here, was notoriously poor, and used to paint on shirt boards that are now highly collectable). But all in all, Hall doesn't have special criteria for what works well as a portrait. "It just has to work well as a painting," he says.

Whenever I speak with Hall about his impressive exhibitions, he always provides a bonus art history lesson. Some pieces in this show are from his collection and have never before been exhibited, while others are contemporary artists he follows. We bounced about the space while he informed me which artist was influential when, gave anecdotes, and told me who studied with whom.

Near the entrance, two large portraits by Civil War-era artist Shepherd Alonzo Mount depict a pleasant-looking young couple who, despite the modest poses and surroundings, have dancing eyes and firmly set mouths that almost twitch in the corners with restrained laughter.

Contemporary figurative artist Tom Insalaco's immaculate oil work is represented many times in this show, including a few of his characteristically deeply introspective self portraits. But the work that took my breath away here is the portrait "My Mother," in which the elderly woman is swathed in incredible light, giving life to every detail from the intensity of emotion in her eyes, to the lovingly painted hands folded in her lap. Look for another tribute to an artist's mother by Samuel F. B. Morse (yep, of the telegraph), who, Hall says, was a "very pivotal figure in American Art History."

Lorraine Bohonos's "Woman with Bobbed Hair II" is a sketchy piece that evokes a serious noir mood. The subject has vulnerably hostile eyes, and looks like she just materialized from the rainy night into your office, lit up a smoke, and opened up her can of woes all over your gumshoes. Bohonos packs a lot into the few strokes that make up "Bearing Witness": the bare features of a large, vague black watercolor face on white paper, with inky eyes bleeding off into blank space, nose, mouth, and jawline providing just enough to provide a detached, meditative face.

Jack Wolsky's two encaustic-on-board pieces are based on the poetry of a young Romanian who died in a Stalinist concentration camp. Understandably complex, there is a "strange blend of very dark and very exuberant qualities," says Hall. In each "Backlight Dance" (Nos. 19 and 20) is a very strong sense of emergence from the depths of the ether, like haunting memories, or the defiant search for beauty and meaning in a wealth of tragedy.

Wayne Williams is able to derive maximum emotion from minimal gesture in his small bronze pieces. In "Study for Ocean Figure I," the woman leans slightly forward into the wind, eyes closed, the only hint of drama and motion lay in the restive ties of her halter dress gusting behind her. Near-twin foot-tall sculptures by Naples-area artist Don Sottile, entitled "Ragazza di Circo" (I and II), are two nude women, one young and one old, depicted with focused poise from their balancing arms, down to the details of their toes slightly gripping the surface of the spheres on which the stand.

"On the altar" is a large-scale piece by painter and RIT professor Amy McLaren, and is rife with symbolism, from a haloed woman in a black cloak holding a white bird, to the group of men staring up at her expectantly, amid a gold-leafed geometric background. "I always thought it was about Susannah and the Elders, but that may be pure invention on my part", says Hall. McLaren's "Three Days in May" is reminiscent of Kahlo in subject, as it is about the artists's broken back after a car accident. But the style is all her own - it is obvious that Hall admires her greatly as he describes the wealth of "symbolic element and very daring, very assertive use of colors. She's not risk averse." McLaren has a tendency toward making highly detailed faces on abstracted and often acidic backgrounds, as if only the countenances matter and the rest of the world is there for the faces.

In "Ida," Richard Jenks gives a name and your undivided attention to the probably overlooked flower lady on the street. Her wares creep off the picture plane because she's the point of the picture - the scale of the portrait and swaths of color are not easily ignored. Ida is bundled against the visceral bite of winter, wearing many hats and draped in a manically colored crocheted afghan. Jenks's choppy brushstrokes and a burst of bare branches placed behind her head add energy to her calm, weather-worn face.

With portraiture, there is a strange alchemy of reality and interpretation. I always wonder how much is the skillful yet unconscious recording of what's there in that emotional face, and how much is discerned, refined, imagined, and added by the artist.

Life Class

Through August 2

The Oxford Gallery, 267 Oxford St.

271-5885, oxfordgallery.com

Tuesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.