Brian Calvin Portrait

Brian Calvin

1 collaboration

Brian Calvin colour matching paintwork
Brian Calvin Portrait

Brian Calvin

“I’m always looking for ‘the soul’ in the painting that I can connect to. If I can feel it, someone else can feel it.”

Painting the in-between

Brian Calvin creates close-up portraits and landscapes. He fragments his subjects, exploring the line between figuration and abstraction. Faces appear mosaic-like and androgynous, with several often appearing on the same canvas. Calvin draws and paints, working with coloured pencils and pastels on paper, or acrylics on canvas and linen. His use of colour is flat yet luminous, with a cartoonish appeal. The exaggeration of his characters' eyes add to this effect, while their glossy lips and fingernails are reminiscent of makeup ads. His work combines elements of Pop Art and Cubism, as well as bu...

Bio

Brian Calvin was born in 1969 in Visalia, California. He now lives and works in Ojai, California.

In their words

Brian Calvin discovered art through music. He says, “music was the prism through which I could imagine a life spent making art”. Having spent his younger years in bands, many of his favourite artists are, in fact, musicians.

Collections

His work forms part of many public collections across the USA. In Los Angeles alone, his paintings can be found in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA).


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