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 buried references to Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Philip Guston, who helped the artist imagine painting as a viable means of communication: "he was speaking to the times without being so direct or literal".