San Francisco based artist John Wentz plays with texture and abstraction in what he calls his “fractured” oil paintings of figures. Previously featured on our blog, the figures in Went’z work have been described as hazy, dreamy, and stripped away, broken down to a combination of nondescript washes and bold areas of pigment that evoke the feeling of remembering a distant memory that comes back to us as distorted. In his artist statement, he explains that “working within the classical idiom of the human figure, his goal is to reduce and simplify the image to it’s core fundamentals: composition, color, and paint application.” His ongoing series titled “Passages” depicts groupings of anonymous figures ‘passing’ through a barely-there environment as light reflects off their bodies in variants of greens, blues and yellows. Wentz will debut new works for the series at Arcadia Contemporary gallery’s booth at the LA Art Show, coming to Los Angeles next week. His exhibit there will also introduce a new portrait series, titled “Imprint”, where rendered parts of each subject’s face are scraped away with a palette knife to reveal a myriad of colors and patterns underneath. Get an early preview of Wentz’s new works below, courtesy of the artist.
In Taylor Schultek’s riveting oil paintings, an urban structure is as much a character as his human subjects. The connection between humanity and environment is often at play, with the art of graffiti often in progress. The artist's own history in graffiti and graphic design seem to converge in building believable backdrops.
South African artist 
