I was raised in the Midwest and have since lived in a number of cities throughout the continental U.S., all of which have left their traces in my paintings. When my paintings aren’t navigating cultural and personal narratives relating to anxiety and looking for hope, they focus with reverence and dignity on subjects existing in the material world of the regular and overlooked. I aim to capture the struggle with a quiet but intense craving to connect with another person, the planet, and the divine and the vulnerability that comes with doing so.

 My practice involves defamiliarization of everyday imagery that calls for identification. The everyday is presented in a new light as subjects are veiled in exaggerated lighting, observed at night, and captured in fleeting glances. What do you see? What are the cues? When glancing at the details of unspecified images and objects, the viewer may fall into a reverie of imagined scenarios. My work, In Dark, You See Everything, invites the viewer to an enticing glimpse into a stranger’s window at night.

 I seek comfort in the corporeal. Through bodily motifs such as orifices, cellulite, and cystic pearls, I am interested in creating worlds that bring benign and malignant forces into harmony. My shaped panels are obscured and distorted to generate tension. The tension resides not only in the mysterious shapes, but in the exploration of bodily containment within these contorted forms and surfaces. The textural anomalies on the sleek surfaces of my paintings serve as points of seduction, adding another layer beyond form and color to unveil palpable, sensory realms.

 I pull from Haitian history and vodou cosmology, Christian religious iconography, and contemporary life to create richly colored narrative paintings, drawings, and prints. Pulling from the rich tapestry of Haiti’s cultural heritage, I intertwine fact and fiction to allow room for speculation, contemplation, anger, and desire.

 Sparked in high school by the photography of Gordon Parks, my art is driven by a lifelong passion for portraiture and realism. Over the past 25 years, I have fused photography and painting to create portraits that incorporate color, pattern, and fabric as integral elements.

 Ana Cláudia Almeida has always been in love with materials. As they are juxtaposed or pressed against each other, she seeks movement and multiple perspectives on situations, engaging with ambiguity and contrast to understand herself as a body in the world. Surrounded by the city, nature, and architecture and shaped by the social systems of gender, religion, and sexuality, these inputs are absorbed and transformed into something else as we seek for liberation in our minds.

Through my practice, I chronicle the lived and imagined experiences of and between human beings. I believe painting can be a tool for considering the emotional, psychological complexity of an individual’s story and identity. Creating imagery that connects one’s realm to that of another, I alter perception and aim to invoke empathy towards my subjects by depicting their reality across a visceral lens. Focusing on portraiture and figuration, my subjects include family, friends, and cultural figures placed in constructed settings.

 Jesse Zuo is a New York-based Chinese oil painter and illustrator. Through figurative images, she expresses her take on femininity, physicality, emotions, and precious moments in life. She practices detail-focused traditional realism and explores contemporary expression in chromatic colors.

 My paintings’ shifting readability generates a fluidity between absence and presence, reflecting the flickering state of being created from living with a chronic disease. Working with motifs of miniatures and toys, I am interested in scale, motion, and repetition. What does it mean to make the miniature giant, to make the giant miniature, or to allow the miniature to remain?

 I use painting as a way to reconstruct my internal experiences and explore unrecognizable emotions through personal allegories. My works reflect my own desires as a drifter in life, as well as societal pressures and responsibilities demanded of a painter. While I start painting with daily sketches and writings, I deviate from the initial plan by incorporating unexpected elements throughout my painting process. This approach allows me to create dramatic and absurd worlds within my paintings.