Alex Garant’s Double-Eyed Oil Paintings

Canadian artist Alex Garant paints realistic portraits that capture her subjects in multiples. Using traditional portrait techniques, her oil paintings combine graphic design elements with abstraction in great detail. Looking at her work is like getting lost in an optical illusion, where colorful patterns are key to holding the composition together. Among her stylistic inspirations, she credits early ink printing, Pop surrealism, Baroque tapestries and themes found in retro kitsch. This is especially apparent in her use of image superposition, where her subject’s 70s-esque big lips and eyes are enhanced. It’s a signature detail that she’s come to describe as the “double eyes”. Symmetry and duplication are important tools which Garant uses to engage her viewer. They can add to the overall image effect, inducing a physical reaction that makes us look beyond their prettiness.

Topics

Abstract, Alex Garant, Optical Illust, Portraiture, Symmetry

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer, Portraiture, Salusitano

October 1, 2015

Spanish artist “Salusitano” paints large-scale mixed media portraits of gazing figures. His works are precisely detailed, oftentimes with 60 layers of paint or more. Appearing almost hyper-realistic, up-close they reveal tiny cross hatched marks made using colored pencil, conte crayon, and oil paint by the tip of the brush. The artist likens this technique to carving out the facial expressions of his protagonists; young girls, boys and women of various cultures.

Margaret Bowland Finds the Meaning of Power in New Portraits

Edouard Manet, Margaret Bowland, oil painting, Portraiture, the Virgin Queen

October 20, 2015

As a young girl, artist Margaret Bowland's favorite books and songs told stories about love and life, stories that condition girls to expect certain things out of life and want to be a certain way. Ideas about love, beauty, and personal identity are at the heart of her 19th century-inspired oil paintings, covered here. In particular, her portraits often feature the same African American girl named "J", grandly styled with her face painted white, and attended to by white servants. She makes a reappearance in Bowland's upcoming exhibition at Driscoll Babcock in New York, "Power".

Alex Garant Presents New Double-Eyed Portraits in “Wakefulness”

Abstraction, Alex Garant, Portraiture

February 4, 2016

Canadian artist Alex Garant's "double-eyed" portraits, featured here on our blog, have become instantly recognizable for the dizzying effect they create. Her style of overlaying her subject's features like eyes and lips produces multiple images that are captivating but admittedly, also challenging to look at; for some, her works create phantom images, and even the feeling of being intoxicated. Her new series of portraits, titled "Wakefulness", is inspired by how our brains enter into a state of consciousness when we wake up.

Eric Lacombe Portrays Mourning Figures in “The Weight of Silence”

Eric Lacombe, painting, Portraiture

March 11, 2016

Interpretations of Lyon based Eric Lacombe's mixed media works and paintings have been varied and extreme: monstrous, melancholy, horrific, and even beautiful. Describing his art as "caricatures of the soul", the self-taught artist's images exaggerate and distort his characters' faces into haunting portrayals. Their faces look almost like masks, some painted without mouths or eyes, or given bird-like beaks, and yet their transfiguration is the most revealing thing about them. Each is a sort of reflection of the artist's own feelings, who likens his subjects' appearance to a deconstruction of their torment.

Alex Garant’s Double-Eyed Oil Paintings

Salusitano Paints Large Detailed Portraits of Gazing Figures

Margaret Bowland Finds the Meaning of Power in New Portraits

Alex Garant Presents New Double-Eyed Portraits in “Wakefulness”

Eric Lacombe Portrays Mourning Figures in “The Weight of Silence”

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