New York based painter and illustrator Mike Perry is an artist working in a variety of mediums, once describing his collection of works as having an “antsy” energy. He doodles around the clock, whether creating new typefaces for his graphic design work or new burst of colorful characters that amass in his paintings. At his website, he writes that his creative goal is “to conjure that feeling of soul-soaring wonder you have when you stare into distant galaxies on a dark night, when you go on long journeys into the imagination, when you ponder what it is that this life is all about.”
Artist Mike Perry in his New York studio.
If the title of Perry’s most recent solo “Intoxicating Pollen Wiggling in a Moist Journey of Constantly Blooming Tides” is any indication, humor and abstraction are integral to his work: at its core, his images celebrate the human form which he transforms into lyrical shapes and lines. His newer large-scale paintings embody all of his work’s signature elements: vibrant colors and wacky compositions that evoke our childhood drawings while also closely examining the sexuality and expressiveness of the figure. Often, his work is compared to artists like Henri Matisse, for his use of color and his fluid and original draftsmanship.
Perry writes, “How did we all end up here now, at this time, in this place? How do we respond to and resolve the mystery that surrounds us? What do we do when our soul calls us somewhere we do not know the name of or the directions to, but only the feeling of? When we are lost in longing, how can we remember what makes us laugh and allow ourselves to giggle and be tickled? There are many thoughts and stories and celebrations that remain to be told, so many sketches that you have not yet seen.” Mike Perry’s “Intoxicating Pollen Wiggling in a Moist Journey of Constantly Blooming Tides” is on view at Garis & Hahn in New York through tomorrow, April 22nd, 2016.
Australian artist 
Chicago based artist Jonathan Gardner's figurative-pop works combine an overabundance of 20th century styles. His paintings feature simplified figures in spaces that borrow visual techniques by artists like Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Henri Matisse, and Fernand Léger. Gardner makes otherwise mundane scenes more interesting by enhancing the patterns in things like his subject's clothing, wallpaper, and tiled floors. Some of his subjects appear more melancholy, others more humored and lively, as in his images of women tanning by the swimming pool and playing tennis.