Aaron Uzzle

My favorite genre of art is portrait painting because of the limitless ways it can depict human life. My interest in it piqued with each visit to an art museum but left me conflicted due to the absence of Black people featured. I exclusively paint Black people in response to the predominantly White presence of the genre.I use oil paint because it best creates textured and poignant brushstrokes in my artwork. I paint the subjects with dramatic lighting on large canvases. I juxtapose the figures with vibrant and dreamlike backgrounds to put the figures in a surreal state. I use Afro-futurist aesthetics in the portraits, formerly borrowing from the Western canon, to present conventional ideas to a familiar genre. 

VA

United States