Mérida, Venezuela based artist Miguel Devia injects an emotional intensity into his portraits of close friends and figures of literature. Though his subjects are ones that he is familiar with, he often strays from capturing their likeness or any particular sense of familiarity. Rather, his primary interest seems to be in their expressiveness, playing with line and contrasting colors to evoke the emotion of the person or setting. Devia works in both digital illustration and oil painting, and in both mediums, he combines a psychological acumen with graphic design and illustrative devices. In many works, his subject’s clothing is rendered as a solid and undefined mass, while others, the figure disappears or is elongated, as in his portrait of “Telas”. Though she is placed on a jarring red background, a color usually associated with anger or danger, there is a sort of melancholy in her face. His most recent portrait “Helen” (“painted with love”) features a bold and graphic shadow cutting across the picture, altering the scene’s mood. Take a look at more of Miguel Devia’s works below.
