The Portraitists

A conversation with Zboik Czajkowski, a Polish figurative artist that practices between the cities of Berlin, Germany and Warsaw, Poland. Czajkowski is a prominent figure in the street art and graffiti scene - his career taking him from London to Tokyo. Czajkowski’s current practice is balanced between large-scale mural commissions, which he executes with a small team, and that he pursues as an opportunity for travel and social engagement - and his studio practice, where he digests his emotions through the warped portraiture he renders in a signature visual language he’s developed since his youth.  @zboik 

A conversation with Wylee Risso, a figurative painter currently practicing in Portland, OR. Risso’s body of work spans an eclectic assortment of subjects - images untethered by audience-focused theming, but instead images that strike the artist - the refracted lightshow of a dishpit, or a single frame of a cult-classic. Risso translates these images into a signature style characterized by a frenzy of lines that search for supernatural geometry - resulting in a sharp, flat, Euclidean fantasyscape. @wyleerisso

A conversation with Rustam Hasanov, a Russian-American figurative artist currently practicing in Atlanta, GA. Hasanov is a multidisciplinary artist with a career in animation and character design. Inspired to rediscover the artistic passions of his youth - nonreactive to audience or commercialism - Hansanov has refocused on a ritualistic, and non-commodified practice. Hasanov creates rapid expressive gestural figures of his selected models - explore their condition as he emulates his own and merges the two. As a self-described introvert, through this practice, Hasanov seeks to connect.  @rustamhasanov

A conversation with Roxy Peroxyde, a figurative artist practicing in Montreal, Canada. Peroxyde is best known for her vivid contemporary interpretations of classic paintings which she describes to be “witnesses to how times change but people stay the same”. Peroxyde yields to her subconscious as she develops her compositions - blending humor, pop culture, fashion, and a universal, but sometimes suppressed, feminine gaiety in her images. *ref, roxyperoxyde.com @roxyperoxyde

A conversation with James Zamora, a Texan figurative painter currently practicing in Savanna, GA. Zamora is known for his realist still life paintings that span subjects from traditional floral arrangements to images of contemporary mundanity. Zamora also elevates and immortalizes images and icons from his childhood - giving vintage gaming consoles the reverence of a Flemish composition.  @jameszamora

A conversation with Gina Altadonna, a figurative artist currently practicing in Philadelphia, PA. Altadonna is a multidisciplinary artist, known for her vibrant watercolor and oil paintings. Altadonna uses her practice as a means of both inward and outward dialogue - articulating the experiences of girlhood and womanhood. Unabashedly, Altadonna reclaims the preferences of her youth and broadcasts them in her macabre compositions - depictions of trauma, melancholy, and mortality rendered in candies and ribbons.   

A conversation with Amy Erickson, an Oklahoman figurative painter practicing in Seattle, Washington. Erickson's work spans media from oil paint, to colored pencil, to collage. Her deep and lifelong attention to subject and multi-iterative method result in a "compression of multiple dimensions into one object”. Erickson's work seeks to illustrates the profound within familiar moments and settings.  *ref, paraphrase, canvasrebel.com @amyericksn

A conversation with Ben Hope, an Oxonian figurative painter currently practicing in London. Hope utilizes various procedures, but iconically, his plein air work captures a frenzy of observations spanning scales and dimensions - from the hue of a particular seasonal lighting that must be returned to the following year, to the impression of a darting passer-by. Hope, inspired by great English artists, such as JMW Turner, has developed an application of kineticism and abrasion - ransacking his surfaces with marks.

A conversation with Jerry Weiss, a figurative painter and author, raised in Miami, Florida, currently practicing in Connecticut, and teaching at the Art Students League of New York. Weiss has spent his life obsessed with the "sacred subjects" of the portrait and landscape. Weiss' influence of early 20th century illustrators has permeated his portraiture with a graphic quality that combined likeness & chromatic realism with bold outlines and compress dimensionality.

A conversation with Tom Mead, a figurative painter practicing in Essex, England. Mead's work explores "the visuals and ideology from childhood including toys, naïvely constructed environments, ambiguous narratives, and an undercurrent of existentialism." *ref, paraphrased, tommead.co.uk @tommeadmead

A conversation with Jon Hingston, an English figurative painter currently practicing in New York City, New York. Hingston paints landscapes, still lifes, figures, and portraits - adapting to the seasons and circumstance, his format and subjects lend to opportunity. Hingston's work explores chromatic honesty and the deconstruction of figurative representation.

A conversation with Aaron Nagel, a portrait painter currently practicing in Portland, Oregon. Nagel applies his reverence for renaissance aesthetics, and interest in antique religious imagery to produce classically inspired portraiture, some with playful Catholic nods. @aaronnagel

A conversation with Kirsten Valentine, a figurative painter currently practicing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Valentine utilizes found vintage photography as references - peering into the moments of strange people in strange times. Valentine combines mediums, graphics, and sober figurative representation, often suspended in a stark white void. @kirstenvalentine

A conversation with Daria Troshkina, a Russian figurative painter practicing in Berlin, Germany. Troshkina recently approached oil painting from a background in tattoo art and its greater general culture. Fandom of horror, metal music, classic Russian love stories, and the Baroque aesthetic intersect in her experimental subject matter. @dariatroshkina

A conversation with Juliano Mazzuchini, a Brazilian figurative painter currently practicing in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mazzuchini, with an extensive background in theater, translates the full-body kineticism of stage acting to the composition of his paintings. Combined with the aesthetic of vintage flash photograph, Mazzuchini's work balances between eerie and familiar. @mazzuchini

A conversation with David Shevlino, a figurative painter currently practicing in Raleigh, North Carolina. Shevlino, with a foundation of classical appreciation and traditional technique, liberated by the rhythms of plein air, and ambition to discover a unique and self-expressive voice, had developed a style of figurative render that has inspired a generation of painters. @davidshevlino

A conversation with Shannon Purcell, a portrait artist practicing in Austin, Texas. Purcell seeks to create ‘talismanic’, concrete works that have substantial presents. His work explores self-portraiture beyond the self - beyond the attributes of sex, gender, or even the singular body at its most literal.  @shannonpurcellart

A conversation with Roni Taharlev, a figurative painter practicing in Jaffa, Israel. Taharlev's work nods to the aesthetics of classical European painting, while exploring themes such as the objectification, gender, and birth. *ref, wikipedia.com @taharlevroni

A conversation with Bobby Leash, a figurative, manga-inspired painter. Leash practices in proximity to Bangkok, Thailand. Leash's work is inspired by the visual grammar he absored as a young comic enthusiast, and now acts a means to tell the stories of his life. His imminent solo exhibition at Joyman Gallery centers around themes of perseverance in the face of surrender. @bobbyleash

A conversation with Lucy Stopford, a portrait painter currently practicing in Oxford, England. Stopford explores the relationship between marks and likeness; surpassing the obvious and rejecting the safety and repetition of a reliable method to find a new language for each subject. *ref, lucystopford.com @lucystopford_artist