Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Sarah Muirhead Exhibits Large-Scale Figurative Paintings in “Bonded”

Edinburg based artist Sarah Muirhead (covered here) portrays every day people in her mottled, figurative acrylic paintings. The watercolor-like quality of her art lends to her keen observations of the body and skin tones. Muirhead elaborates on her style choice in her artist statement: "The quality of flesh, its contrasting textures and tensions, the density and potential of muscle and the irregularity and dimples in fatty tissue are important in the way I want to describe any given subject. I want the bodies I paint to be a strange mixture of lurid, glistening attraction and true empathic realism avoiding elegant cliches." She continues her unique exploration of the figure in "Bonded," which opens today at Leyden Gallery in London. 

Edinburg based artist Sarah Muirhead (covered here) portrays every day people in her mottled, figurative acrylic paintings. The watercolor-like quality of her art lends to her keen observations of the body and skin tones. Muirhead elaborates on her style choice in her artist statement: “The quality of flesh, its contrasting textures and tensions, the density and potential of muscle and the irregularity and dimples in fatty tissue are important in the way I want to describe any given subject. I want the bodies I paint to be a strange mixture of lurid, glistening attraction and true empathic realism avoiding elegant cliches.” She continues her unique exploration of the figure in “Bonded,” which opens today at Leyden Gallery in London. There is an added intensity to her representation of emotion and spirit in her new paintings, some of her largest to date. Her subjects are bound in different ways, whether physically in rope or hair, or emotionally, represented by colors and dark shadows. Muirhead’s simple compositions put an emphasis on their poses to tell a story – as they dance, bend and contort, she is able to communicate feelings such as pleasure and pain. Take a look at more images from “Bonded” by Sarah Muirhead below.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Over the past few years, many of Ivy Haledeman's intimate paintings have focused on an anthropomorphic female hot dog character. The character bends and lounges across the canvas, often extending most of its form out of our view. While surely offering more erotic themes to extract, Haldedeman’s paintings also seem to be offering reflections on the capitalistic system that produces “hot dogs” themselves.
Keya Tama is a South African artist who says he aims to "reunite old and new through contrasting yet unified iconography." Tama's talent for crafting interlocking creatures, either in the backgrounds of his paintings or in the form of murals, also recalls the work of M.C. Escher. Recently, the Los Angeles-based artist has also been collaborating with others in his pieces, such as the work with Caratoes at the jump.
Japanese artist Shintaro Ohata places sculptures in front of paintings to create wondrous scenes inspired by childhood. They play out every day encounters between his child subjects, their pets and imaginary friends with the world around them. While their lives may seem ordinary for the most part, Ohata's playful and impressionistic style make them feel like fantasies. They are sculpted from polystyrene which are then painted to perfectly match their traditional 2D acrylic backgrounds.
Berlin-based American artist James Bullough splinters and fractures hyper-realistic paintings of women to open spaces through which complex and unfinished stories are revealed. The vibrancy of skin tone and naturalistic musculature in Bullough's technique were learned through an intensive study of Old Master paintings. Bullough's interest in Old Masters is also evident in the way in which several of his nude subjects stare at the viewer, while taking care to keep their faces at least partially concealed.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List