Amy Guidry, a North Carolina-born, Louisiana-based artist, crafts surreal acrylic works on canvas that often tie the human psyche to the natural world. Series like “In Our Veins” moves into the concepts of survival, life and death, and destruction. It’s in these works that Guidry seems to highlight the inherent beauty of flora and fauna and the strangeness buried within humanity.
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.”
“Gravities” is certainly an apt moniker for the works of Cinta Vidal, whose acrylic images on wood offer something to ingest at every angle. Take “Together Alone,” above, a collection of narratives that are at once harmonious and disparate. The artist has said she tries “to attach importance to every point of view, and to create more than only one outstanding scene in each painting.” Vidal was featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 36, and she can be found on Instagram here.
Japanese artist Shintaro Ohata places sculptures in front of paintings to create wondrous scenes inspired by childhood. They play out every day encounters between his child subjects, their pets and imaginary friends with the world around them. While their lives may seem ordinary for the most part, Ohata’s playful and impressionistic style make them feel like fantasies. They are sculpted from polystyrene which are then painted to perfectly match their traditional 2D acrylic backgrounds.
The brutal paintings of Cleon Peterson (covered here) have a visceral effect on the viewer, plunging them deeply into a world of chaos, ruin and violence. On August 29th, Peterson brings his iconic style to Detroit’s Library Street Collective for his latest exhibition, “Poison.” “The show is about revenge, which is a current of poison running through our culture and other cultures around the world.” Peterson shares. “It’s often a motivation for war and a justification for punishment. It is a social impulse that is destructive and easy to be complicit in.” Peterson is deliberate in his unflinching presentation of the darker side of human nature. In this world, muscle-headed brutes cross swords and knives, locked in a cycle of aggression.
Josh Keyes (HF Vol 12 cover artist) and Brin Levinson (covered here) both illustrate an affinity for animals in their paintings. Working in acrylic and oil respectively, their collective exhibition “Reclamation of Nowhere”, which opens tomorrow at Antler Gallery in Portland, illustrates desolate environments from the animal’s point of view. Josh Keyes chose to convey feelings of liberation and reclamation in his new series. “It is suggesting surrender, or letting go, or loosening of the psychological framework and preconceptions that can sometimes hold and restrain our imagination and natural impulses,” he explains. Check out our preview after the jump.