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The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Tag: oil painting

Gregory Jacobsen’s unsettling, vivid oil paintings offer portraits, scenes, and bizarre explorations of the most unflattering aspects of our anatomy. The Chicago-based artist sometimes abandon the figurative, instead offering a vague, writhing mash-up of organic materials. All are rooted in the artist’s fixations and sense of humor.
Laura Buss creates stirring oil paintings with subjects that appear to moving through planes of reality. The San Francisco-based artist renders both scenes and intimate studies that carry introspective themes. Buss had a recent show of her paintings at Modern Eden Gallery.
Cuba-born artist Juan Travieso blends nature and abstraction in his oil and acrylic paintings. From endangered animals to cultural icons, Travieso’s explorations track the changing world by both capturing its beauty and relaying the bleakness of its treatment. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Cuban artist Alexi Torres crafts oil paintings that appear as though they're woven, tethering both contemporary iconography and human subjects. In the artist’s portraits, the effect hints at the complexity of these figures; in his broader, more cultural works, the style hints at how so much of our interests and icons are tethered. His process is multi-layered, intricately taking the familiar and adding his “knitted” sensibility.
The intimate paintings of London-based artist Emma Hopkins carry both vulnerability and absorbing detail, as rendered in oil in the artist’s visceral style. Each of the works carry a story, often directly depicting a subject Hopkins knows. “When I work with people I develop a body of work based on the individuals themselves and the ideas that come from the experience of working with them,” the artist says. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Figurative painter Carl Dobsky creates oil paintings that acknowledge both the history of the form and the contemporary. The narrative work, in particular, reveals just flashes of magic hidden in his dramatic, realistic scenes. The butterflies in "Ship of Fools" is one example of this, as the periled occupants of a small vessel attempt to survive. The enormous piece took a year to complete.
Amanda Greive's oil paintings contain both conversations about gender and the history of art itself. Using feminine iconography and abstraction, she injects intrigue into her realistic works while maintaining a consistent elegance and absorbing quality.
Dan Lydersen’s vibrant, yet disconcerting explorations take a look at the Western experience through the lens of childhood. His oil paintings often specifically look at suburbia, whether through a dystopic landscape packed with its icons or through a contemporary filter. Lydersen was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Oil painter Joel Rea crafts surreal, modern narratives that create confrontations between man and nature. The artist, living and working in Australia, designs allegories that speak to the fragility and power of either side.He most recently had an exhibition at Mitchell Fine Art in Brisbane titled “Outsider.” Rea last appeared on HiFructose.com here.
Jessica Hess’s paintings of time-worn structures feel patched together like memories, carrying signs of past stages and residents. The artist’s ongoing dialogue with "survey of derelict spaces void of human presence,” as described in one statement, takes a more vibrant turn in how these buildings evolve. Though none of these paintings features humans, all take on a ghostly personality, as rendered by Hess. She was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Stockholm-based artist Joakim Ojanen crafts pastel-colored characters that seem to be varying ages at the same time, while playing with perspective. He accomplishes this in both 2D and 3D, using oil portraits and stoneware sculptures to bring his visions to life. Above, one towering character is given even stranger depth in bronze.
Iran-born, Brussels-based artist Sanam Khatibi crafts oil and pencil works that continue a Renaissance-era visual dialogue, yet exploring gender dynamics and dominance through her singular voice. Her figures are described as “ambiguous with their relationship to power, violence, sensuality and each other.”
Riccardo Mayr carefully adds elements and characters from the Star Wars franchise to original oil paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. A new show, "Religious Paintings of the Expanded Galaxy," collects these works at Gallery 30 South in Pasadena. The gallery says one goal is to "present religious faith and ethics in a post-modern paradigm largely embedded in fictional reality through a multi-generational exposure and fascination with successful science fiction movies."
Italian painter Alessandro Sicioldr crafts dreamlike, engrossing oil paintings that use the human body as an unsettling vessel. In his latest works, in particular, a bleakness is present, as barren backdrops host his creatures. He was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Tokyo-born painter Toru Kamei is known for painting what he calls “beautiful nightmares,” arresting oil scenes that balance nature and morbidity. He was last featured on HiFructose.com here, and since that piece, the artist has a breakthrough in the fashion world. The artist recently collaborated with Dior Homme on an exclusive collection, implementing his work into both accessories and ensembles. Belgian fashion designer Kris Van Assche reportedly came across the artist's work when researching floral motifs.
The surreal oil paintings of Mexico-born artist Jose Luis Lopez Galvan put elegant, yet strange twists on the familiar. His works recall masters like Rembrandt and Dali, while blending in a contemporary tinge and Galvan’s singular, twisted vision. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Ron English's oil paintings have long entertained, bewildered, and challenged viewers in each's absorbing strangeness. In a new show at Corey Helford Gallery, titled "TOYBOX: America in the Visuals," the artist offers his latest body of work. The pop art legend’s show starts Dec. 2 and runs through Dec. 30. The new collection deploys “the artist's long established visual vocabulary into multi-layered narratives of ambition and imagination.” English was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Belinda Wiltshire crafts stirring oil paintings, carrying abstractions or other surreal touches that add intimacy to each portrait. The Melbourne-based painter works primarily in the figurative, and at times, fellow artists appear in her pieces. Peers like Tamara Dean and The Huxleys have been depicted by Wiltshire.
Just in time for Halloween, the new oil paintings of Beau White are as unsettling as they are absorbing. For this set, the Melbourne-based artist adds new layers to his work by integrating food and sweets alongside his gruesome faces. In a new group show at BeinArt Gallery in Australia, titled “Memento Mori, Memento Amare,” his latest work is collected. Isbael Peppard and Jonathan Guthmann also have pieces in the show.
Painter Kehinde Wiley was recently chosen by former President Barack Obama to paint his official portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Wiley should be familiar to Hi-Fructose readers: His work appeared on the cover of Hi-Fructose Vol. 36 and was featured in the exhibition “Turn the Page: The First 10 Years of Hi-Fructose.”
The new oil paintings of New York-based artist Kajahl explore "the history and taxonomy of portraiture." The paintings take notes from differing cultures through time for hybrid reflections on the history of human creativity. The artist's current show at Richard Heller Gallery, titled "Unearthed Entities," presents a new collection of these works.
Daniel Bilmes plays with texture in his oil paintings, with small and meticulous strokes crafting absorbing portraits. Often limiting his colors, Bilmes is able to extract a vibrancy out of his intricate linework and abstractions. His portraits seem to be a continuation of oil traditions while mixing in new applications.
Joanne Nam’s oil paintings often focus on females or animals against desolate, wooded backdrops. Each stares off in contemplation, with Nam’s single-word titles often offering context with descriptors like “Lucid,” “Numb,” or “Belong.” Her recent works are even more dreamlike, blending in touches of gold leaf. Nam was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Ben Howe’s arresting oil paintings offer hyperdetailed and eerie reflections on humanity. A new show at beinArt Gallery in Australia collects his newest paintings under the titled “Weave.” The new show tackles “themes of mortality, isolation, longing, melancholy and loss and sits somewhere between the physical constraints of reality and the anarchic realm of the subconscious.” Howe was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Toni Hamel’s recent oil paintings explore our relationship with the natural world. In particular, Hamel shows us how our selfishness and dominion over animals taken an even more disastrous turn. These pieces are part of a body of work called “The Land of Id.” She was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Spanish artist Ivana Flores crafts pop-surrealist oil paintings with both a childlike sense of whimsy and ominous undertones. At grand sizes, the works carry an absorbing quality that pulls you into her worlds. Her work has been described as “reality, dream, everyday life and imagination merge at a turning point of boundless consciousness of self-image and world.”
Justin Bower’s abstracted, fractured faces maintain a sense of intimacy. In his latest oil on canvas works, Bower’s evolved this approach with new, startling “glitches.” He's current part of the group show "Los Angeles Painting: Formalism to Street Art" at Bruno David Gallery in Missouri, and he was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Alpay Efe’s moody oil paintings offer vulnerable figures, both obscured by abstract elements and their own postures. The artist is self-described as a figurative painter "influenced by contemporary zeitgeist and pop culture."
The oil paintings Kent Williams are often blends of bold figures and vibrant abstractions, moving between exhibiting the strength, frailty, and elegance of the human form. In his newer works, the subjects are increasingly obscured. Yet, they’re intimacy is amplified, as rendered by Williams. The painter was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Molly Gruninger’s work may appear to be digitally created, but these pieces are actually oil on canvas. The Los Angeles-based artist uses her multi-disciplinary talents to craft figures that are both ornate and elegantly simple in how they’re framed in each work.

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