Artists w/ Formal Similarities

Both are self-portraits from a forward-facing, eye-level perspective with the subjects looking directly at the viewer. Fairly harsh lighting.

ANDREW SALGADO
Pthalo (Study for Self Portrait) oil on canvas, 50x40 cm

LAURENT DAUTAIN
Autoportrait, 2010, acrylic, 130x97cm

Artists w/ Similar Materials/Process

AARON SMITH
Portraiture predominantly of historical figures, thick application of paint and bold use of color, expressive strokes.
Zhooshy,2011,oil on panel, 60"x48"
Kingly,2008,oil on panel,31"x29"

SANDY OSTRAU
Mainly landscapes and some human forms, Thick application of paint and bold use of color, flatter laying of color but still has an expressive quality to it.
Interior with Flowers,18"x18"
After a Ride, 12"x12"

Artists w/ Similar Themes

Both Jaeyeol Han and Benjamin Garcia are interested in perceptions. Han is looking at the relationship between oneself and a random passer-by and how that interaction can play out in artwork. Essentially emotion becomes the one constant all these random people have that can be used to differentiate one work from another. Garcia focuses more so on the internal perceptions an individual seems to have about themselves. His almost surreal handling of subject gets at the expressive quality I was trying to portray in my own work.

JAEYEOL HAN
"Through my previous solo exhibitions I have tried to capture the existential energy released when a complete stranger turns into an object of my interest. This is also a question of object identification.

Crowds of people flowing like a body of water; in crowd, individuals’ energies are negated and their existences dissolved. I cannot remember how many people I have passed by, way away from remembering who they are. I was surrounded by others, but my attention grew stronger into myself.

Through this experience, I came to think that locality and culture are no longer distinguishable, and the face of the crowd a medium that contains the landscape of locality and culture of that age. Emotion, long-suppressed by the oppressive value system of logic, built up without any outlet, emotion is expressed in faces. I was first interested in the structural qualities of the human face, but later realized that this interest arose from a primitive force exerted within faces. Thus I searched for a way to express my findings."

“Passersby, The boy without the glasses," Oil on Canvas, 190x130cm, 2013
“Passersby, Graze” Oil bar on Linen, 34x22.1cm, 2013

BENJAMIN GARCIA
His focus is mostly on portraits with an aesthetic language that is implicitly dark and subtly surreal with an approach to his subjects that is often subjective and intense. His style is very much inspired by the nebulous and unclear images of the mind and dreams, finding in this his true base.

"Think I'll Dream"

"2.1"

Purpose Behind Piece

I was very interested in exploring internal versus external perceptions of personality in this piece. I think emotional expression became the means through which I began to grapple with this issue. Through intentional color choices and thick application of paint, I began to build of the emotional repertoire I could use to convey both internal and external realities. These expressive elements allowed me to better understand both the slightly abstracted way people view themselves. But the wholly representational volumes being created by those expressive elements also speak to how the outsider views the individual as just another person. The reason I was interested with this concept is because it can never truly be resolved. Either you are an insider, seeking to understand how the world views you, or you are an outsider, seeking to understand how that person views the world. It is impossible to be both simultaneously. Thus this is not a work of reality; it is not something that could ever exist. And yet it does. Does that make the viewer omnipotent? But how is it an accurate representation when the artist by definition cannot be both outsider and insider? These are questions I am still working through.