Art by Sean Hopp, Chicago - Surreal Oil Paintings and Portraits Art by Sean Hopp, Chicago - Surreal Oil Paintings and Portraits
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Artist Profile
 

PROCESS

My paintings can have up to 20 working titles scrawled on the back of each canvas by the time they're done. As much as I try to honor the original concept (which can begin as either a sketch or a phrase), as I add layers and colors to the piece, the meaning shifts subtly and a new title suggests itself. I'm sometimes tempted to give paintings multiple titles but then feel compelled to pick one in order to consider it complete.

The images wander through the territories of Horror and Fantasy, twin stepchildren of Myth still lurking in the bowels of the information age. I combine these intertwined populist genres with many other artistic and cultural influences to speculate on the psychic paranoia of a culture that squanders its beauty on systems of control and manipulation.

I work with a combination of oil, acrylic, egg tempera, charcoal, and ink, experimenting with modifications of traditional glazing techniques applied to panels and canvases. I frequently paint with my fingers, and incorporate additional ingredients such as paper, glue, hair, cloth, blood and dirt.

INFLUENCES

I have been primarily infected by the dreams and nightmares of Bosch, Blake, Ernst, Bacon, Fuchs, Dalí, Dürer, DaVinci, Giger, Varo, Bellmer, Albright, Moebius, Crumb, Gorey, Nerdrum, Magritte, Beksinski, Carroll, Poe, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Ballard, Stephenson, Herbert, Dick, Burroughs, Lynch, Cocteau, Gilliam, Svankmejer, Lucas, Henson, Jodorowsky, Quay and Cronenberg.

EXHIBITION HISTORY

  



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Creative Commons License
Work by Sean Hopp is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License


           


©2010 Sean Hopp