Distorted portraiture
I want someone to be drawn in by the uncanny nature of a piece and still feel safe to explore the feelings and reactions the pressure gives rise to. Subtle shifts, repetition, (re)placement, or absence of facial features are attempts to create a feeling of dissonance and pressure in the viewer. The new visuals are a nod to the modern art aesthetic. “I’ve always been fascinated by the mess. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previously ex-isting dataset is suited for this task. Training our proposed networks requires a large corpus of paired portraits with and without perspective distortion. One that grows out of the clash between humanity -our unique mess of emotions, obsessions and urges-and society’s prescription for success.” input portrait to the distortion correction network. With these pieces, I wanted to explore a kind of omnipresent pressure I think we all live under. Contemporary representations inspired by masterworks of the past. “In the most basic sense, I paint portraits. In an artist statement, Villalba explains the ethos of his artistic expression. Often frenetically situated hyperrealistic eyes, or lips scatter across his canvas’ which are each rendered in pastel palettes. Villalba’s paintings are punctuated by distorted features. Although he started out as an abstract major, Villalba later aligned himself with the neo-figurative movement under the guidance of his program director finding himself and his distinctive style in the process. For the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, he animated Jack Sparrow’s dreadlocks.Īt home, as a way to unwind, he began painting experimental abstract watercolors, eventually enrolling in the M.F.A. After earning a bachelor’s degree in animation from the Art Institute of California, the artist, then based in Los Angeles, worked on projects for companies such as Nike, Visa, and Pepsi. painting alumnus, Villalba had no background in the field when he arrived for his first day of classes. Villalba, boasting 139,000 Instagram followers, has become a social media sensation and the story of how he got there, is remarkable in and of itself. He often implores frenetically situated hyperrealistic eyes or lips scatter across his canvas’ which are each rendered in pastel palettes. It’s only when you look closer that you see how he’s re-appropriated the conventional format of the genre: his human faces are distorted and fractured, their facial features obscured or magnified. Inspired by the precision of past artists, at first glance, much of his work resembles Renaissance portraiture. It is often said that contemporary painting has entered a ‘post-conceptual’ phase, in that, there are intentional references to numerous stylistic features embedded in the work itself Villalba’s work is symptomatic of this contemporary tendency. He utilizes expressionistic forms juxtaposed by hyperreal figurative subject matter, to create evocative and arresting imagery. Villalba creates portraits in oil paint which explore the human condition. That is to say, basic painterly questions were, once again, on the agenda, strongly emphasizing relations between the picture plane and the picture space, figuration and abstraction and form and colour.Ĭalifornia-based artist Emilio Villalba aligns himself within the revival of neo-expressive and neo-figurative painting as a proponent of figurative gestural abstraction. Its exponents worked in tune with tradition and with their attention focused on the expressive potentiality inherent in the medium of painting. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more.The 1990s saw a revival of neo-expressive and neo-figurative painting, wherein the gestural properties of the medium itself again came to the fore. (via flavorwire, ignant) #painting #portraits #watercolorĭo stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. She has a number of prints and several of the original paintings you see above available for sale through her website. Harris graduated in 2006 from the Auckland University of Technology and his since done work for Amnesty International, Vice Magazine, and BITE. Do not adjust your web browser, these distorted watercolor and gouache portraits were painted just as they appear by New Zealand-based illustrator Henrietta Harris who says her style “can only be achieved by having occasionally dipped one’s paintbrush accidentally in one’s coffee.” A pretty apt description for these dreamy portraits that seem to convey the precise moment when one becomes lost in thought or memory, an ethereal wind of distortion whirling temporarily through the subjects’ mind.