DAM Awards 2018: Best Painter
If a picture is worth a thousand words, the expressive paintings in Denton must say a lot about the creative culture of our community and its artists. The five best painter nominees use bold strokes to bring our city some powerful, beautiful art.
Sarah Barnett
Sarah Barnett is building an impressive portfolio that tackles themes of religion, existentialism and suffering. A number of her recent works use chiaroscuro and incorporate surrealism by masking or distorting the facial expressions of her subjects, at times to the point of suggesting an added element of fear in them. Her mastery of 18th century Spanish romanticism in much of her portfolio is stunning.
Instagram
Portfolio
Sanford Black
An array of cartoon-inspired characters makes up the portfolio of Jamie McRoberts a.k.a. Sanford Black. These characters are at once reminiscent of classic lo-fi pixelated gaming, a space age sentiment, Japanese animation and comic book superheroes, and incorporate bright colors and a juxtaposition of patterns. In his latest creations, Black plays with more muted colors and some animation of color, and we can’t wait to see how else he grows in his art.
John Bramblitt
If you haven’t been in the know on John Bramblitt before, you may want to watch a video he did with UPROXX News talking about his experiences with making and teaching art once he became blind, due to complications with epilepsy and Lyme disease. His work is an ethereal mixture of bright colors and looks natural on his portraits of rock legends and actors, streetscapes and animal scenes. His portfolio is a wondrous rainbow of imagery.
Instagram
Portfolio
Daniel Christopher McCullagh
Daniel Christopher McCullagh’s work is a continuous challenge to perception, beauty and comfort. Much of his work features prominent distortion, bringing the viewer to a point of discomfort that lingers alongside the beauty of his subjects. McCullagh seamlessly incorporates duality and pain into his works, with a breadth of color usage and styles.
Alex Revier
Alex Revier art incorporates a lot into each piece, nearly to a point of distraction. Whether Revier’s oil works depict a work desk in a garage or grotesque, humanoid manifestations, everything is deliberate and detailed, a simple idea teeming with complexity once put onto the canvas. Revier’s art challenges conceptions of sexuality, transcendence and mainstream ideals.
Header image courtesty of Andrian Valeanu.
Header design by Christopher Rodgers.