The Distorted, Absorbing New Portraits of Mathieu Laca

Canadian artist Mathieu Laca crafts oil paintings that use texture and abstractions that toy with the conventions of portraiture. Whether it’s famous subjects or the vague everyman or everywoman, the artist packs both meticulous, odd flair and personality into each of the paintings. In his historical portraits, he’s given this treatment to anyone from Henry David Thoreau and Albert Einstein to arts figures like Vincent Van Gogh.

A past statement on his work said this about the artist’s portraits: “The artist cares very little about resemblance. If he evokes historical icons and artists of the past, members of his informal pantheon, it’s as much to pay tribute as to vandalize visually. His process includes abstract digressions, monstrous impasto, unpredictable spatters. The result stands as invigorating totems of culture, mad faces in front of the existential nothingness.”

The artist’s work is part of collections across the world, from France and Germany to the U.S., Australia, and Israel. He currently resides in Quebec.