Stuart Snoddy, a painter based in the Midwest, creates “fantasies and fictions about imaginary people.” His oil works on paper and on canvas move between the wistful and the contemplative. And while Snoddy plays with form and hues, each of the artist’s pieces are distinctly human.
The artist says that not every character in his works has a specific origin. “I paint people that surface from a yearning imagination,” Snoddy says, in a statement. “Some are illuminated by the refulgence of past encounters like a glowing filament in a freshly turned off light bulb. And some come from…who knows, or wherever. I guess I just miss my friends. Nostalgia is real sticky stuff. But this fantasy nurtures the narratives of our lives as cohesive intellectual and emotional beings. I indulge it.”
A majority of the work here is oil on canvas, panel, or paper, yet Snoddy’s styles takes a different turn with his gouache works. These smaller pieces comes across more as snapshots than moments, bursts of activity and candid renderings. Lately, the artist has been working even smaller with mini-oil paintings, on panels that are 8 inches in diameter. (Or as the artist asks, “How does one pull oneself into something that is only about as wide as the distance between pupils?”)
Australian artist 
Dave Pollot revitalizes thrift store paintings with surreal or pop culture-centered flourishes. The artist recently painted giant banana duct taped to an existing mountainous backdrop for a piece auctioned for charity. The reason: Pollot says these conversations “can happen while people have little or nothing to eat."
Alvin Ong's oil paintings, depicting decadence and nondiscriminatory consumption, crackle with energy. These works, following a tradition in art history of examining these themes, move between eroticism and aggression. The Singaporean artist offered this most recent body of work as "Supper Club" earlier this year.