Matt Gordon is a mixed-media artist based in Plymouth, Mich., where he crafts both surreal acrylic paintings and graphite drawings. In these images, skeleton characters, bat-human hybrids, and other creatures interact and frolic in different scenarios. Or, as the artist puts it, his works in both mediums “take place in the same dreamy world of happier times.”
Gordon attended the Columbus College of Art and Design in the early 1990s before moving to the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. He’s currently part of the RVCA Artist Network program, for which he’s designed apparel and installations.
When 1xRUN asked him about one particular set of characters, Gordon offered this: “I’ve always had little skeleton dudes that I called family members of messengers of death in my work. These two are little benign ones as they are not old enough to possess a working death card and just frolic about and act as nosy children do.”
According to the site in 2012, these scenes are part of a larger storyline that’s been in the works since 1998, with Gordon hoping to eventually create a storybook out of them. Whether it’s a two-character sketch or a painted scene, Gordon captures both humor and innocence in these works, if not the occasional dose of morbidity.
New york-based Dominican artist 
There’s a shapeshifting quality to the paintings Ricardo Estrada, whose subjects are physically inhabited by cultural iconography. The Los Angeles native specifically focuses on Chicano culture, whether in his murals or acrylic paintings. Each carries intricate brushwork that allows Estrada to transition between differing textures and planes of reality.