Dan Gluibizzi, a Portland-based artist, mixes acrylics and watercolors for his works, each a collection of portraits that together create social examinations. Whether his subjects are in business attire or unclothed, an intimacy carries throughout the sparse works. The artist scours the Internet, specifically nudist blogs and Tumblrs, for inspiration in creating his paintings.
“Gluibizzi eliminates the spatial referents when rendering the subjects he finds engaged in erotic acts,” Aimee Friberg Exhibitions says, commenting on a recent show. “Through watercolor—a medium generally associated with the ease and innocence of children’s art—his subjects form a tangle of limbs that accrue a distinct visual presence through color and formal repetition. The figures, cut from their digital platform, are re-imagined in a decidedly analog method, bringing human touch to the digital world.”
Gluibizzi’s had recent shows in his current city of Portland, Vermont, New York City, San Francisco, and beyond. He attended school at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania for his BFA and acquired his MFA at University of Cincinnati in 1997, before settling in the Northwest.
Iranian painter Ali Esmaeillou reveals haunting parallel universes beneath the pleasant facades of everyday life. In each series of paintings, Esmaeillou explores the psyche of specific archetypes, such as warriors, or digs into the personalities of the characters that compose a particular story, like the great 10th century Persian epic, the Shahnameh.
New York is often described as concrete jungle, a notion