With so many faces in the world, it shouldn't be surprising that there are almost as many different styles of capturing them on a canvas. That's the thought behind the Cannon Art Gallery's "Face to Face: The Changing Face of Portraiture."

The exhibit features 17 contemporary artists and their takes on the art of recording not only a face, but also the person behind that facade. While many of the great masters were known for their portraiture, as the wealthy often paid for these paintings before photographs were available, a good number of contemporary artists still enjoy the challenge.

"Portraiture has been around since ancient times," said Karen McGuire, the gallery's curator of exhibitions and curator of this show. "We wanted to explore how contemporary artists approached this genre."

McGuire first planned to approach 10 to 12 artists, but ended up inviting 17 to be part of the show. Each artist either works in Southern California or is represented by a gallery in this region. Both paintings and photographs make up the exhibition.

"There were so many wonderful portraiture artists," she said, "that we could do a whole other show tomorrow."

She narrowed her focus to works that not only captured a face, but those that recorded a relationship between the model and the artist.

"Some of these works tell a story," she explained. "They are an investigation of the face. Often an artist works with a model they already know, someone from their past. So there's an established relationship there. They tell something about the life of the subject, not just show their facial features.

"That's why we titled the show 'Face to Face.' It's the artist and the model, but there's a double meaning as well. There's also the relationship between the viewer and the artwork."

For example, Leucadia artist James Aitchinson painted Mary Sternberg, who passed away a few years ago. Long Beach artist Perin Mahler created a self-portrait of himself as Atlas, but instead of the world on his shoulders, he's carrying everything from his garage. Former UC San Diego student Sonia Paulino (now a New York City resident) took a series of photographs of people walking their dogs.

New York artist Linda Saphan (who shows at a San Diego gallery) fled Cambodia in the '70s. In her drawings, she has women in several types of traditional Vietnamese dress, but all with her face. The series titled "Incognito" shows how she could be any of these women, said McGuire, so there's a real personal connection to the images.

"All 17 artists have approached the idea of portraiture in a different way, from realistic to abstract," she said. "That's why I'm excited about the show. It shows the range of what contemporary artists are doing with this genre."