Shawn Huckins combines Internet culture and 18th- and 19th- century style portraits in his work. He offers a new collection of large acrylic paintings in “Athenaeum (I Can’t Pretend That This Is Poetry,” an upcoming show at Seattle’s Foster/White Gallery. The artist was featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 32, and he was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Kari-Lise Alexander is fascinated by the landscape and mythology of her Scandinavian roots. We recently featured her ethereal oil and acrylic paintings on our blog, mostly portraits of girls that resemble the nymphs of Nordic folklore. Living and working in Seattle, with its cool and wet winters, also provides Alexander with inspiration, and we often find her subjects bathing in or near water. She portrays mythical swan-maidens in her upcoming solo exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, “A Lovelorn Theft”.
Dallas, Texas based artist Michael Reeder paints eclectic portraits that explore ideas about identity. Reeder is fascinated by the various characteristics that define us, and his works mix those elements both stylistically and conceptually. While his main interest is modern identity, the figures he portrays often have a classical quality. He renders their faces as if he were chiseling away at marble, redefined with abstract and exaggerated features with blank eyes (ancient statue eyes were painted or inlaid.) His portraits aren’t meant to be accurate representations. Rather, he considers portraiture to be more like a reinvention of his subjects, which takes place at their simplest form.