I’m interested in painting and color as a way to explore interior spaces and intimate moments that are often overlooked—paying attention to what is happening when “nothing” is happening—specifically through the nuance and beauty of shadows during ordinary scenes. Shadows have reminded me that these spaces are not static; they're constantly shifting, blending, shrinking, and elongating our surroundings and ourselves, causing our shapes to mingle and hues to change even if we don't intend for them to.

Being mainly a figurative artist, I seek to capture intimate settings to use as a gateway for exploring the human experience. A comprehensive catalog of unique experiences is veiled behind every silent gaze of the human expression. My work is influenced by the genre of magical realism, which gives a prominent place for addressing concepts via emotion, mood, and imaginative means. I refer to my work specifically as “non-urban art,” though I neither consider it rural art, nor is it specifically about rural life.

My work explores my own hybridized body, examining the way society defines, categorizes, and assigns power to it. I am a southerner, a Chinese American, and an immigrant. All these identifiers often clash with one another, creating an internalized hierarchy that leads to a precarious sense of self. These drawings investigate how food and other cultural phenomena are a site of collision for these identities. More precisely, the work investigates how these objects and events are a vehicle for both assimilation and alienation in the South.

Gonzalo Hernandez’s multi-faceted art practice addresses personal narratives related to contemporary dilemmas such as labor, success and failure, the art world, and identity. Culling from autobiographical circumstances, his installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and film are highly particular to his perspective as an immigrant, while also addressing broader cultural associations. Eliminating the distinction between art and life, the artist considers many situations and materials as viable for inclusion in his work, no matter how banal or quotidian.

These paintings use nostalgia to soothe and to question. I have a deep longing for the perceived innocence of the past, especially when reality may feel corrupt and chaotic. Living in the past—or at least in my studio—can feel like a vacation from the present, no matter how problematic the preceding decades.

My artistic practice requires me to delve deeper into the layers of my belief systems and interrogate assumptions in order to understand how my perception of reality influences my work. I am interested in learning about different philosophies that investigate the nature of human experience and our common bonds—for example, Carl Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious, Joseph Campbell’s ideas of the Monomyth, and Taoism’s embrace of reality as an indivisible totality.

Sense of place is a location in our minds triggered by a range of stimuli; scent of blooming plants, echoes of trainyards, smooth and tacky handrails of an escalator—channeled memories shape our perception. In the final stages of our lives, it is often this minutia that is clearest and most palpable in our memory.

During his time as a community health worker in New Orleans, Sean found himself at odds with the troubles people faced in his environment and the lack of attention it was getting. He sought to use art as a means of investigation, and as a result of looking into the problems in his community, Sean arrived at the intersection of art and public health. Through this creative lens, Sean has begun an artistic practice that surveys themes of health and African-American history.

I seek to draw inspiration from the mundanity of everyday life—to reveal the beauty within the ordinary. My paintings depict particular environments and their implicit stories. I work in abstracted realism, painting recognizable places and objects that I manipulate through both color and the juxtaposition of flattened spaces against modeled forms. Although people are absent, a human presence is invariably implied, especially by way of the things that they have left behind.

Demetri Burke uses mixed media—with a basis in oil paint—to express narratives of identity and culture on canvas. His art reflects his upbringing as well as his current experiences. His constant examination of themes is visible in his findings: black like the skin, still like the clouds, and hopeful like his mother’s smile.