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Category: Visual Art

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Sara Suppan’s “Human Anatomical Manikin”

“…my work gravitates in imagery from antiquated medical practices, historic anatomical illustration, and the pathological grotesque. Many of my pieces feature a fusion of botanical and anatomical forms, or structures from the human anatomy acting as an environment in which to house another subject. Roses, or even planetary systems, will be imbedded in muscle tissue; entire figures trapped inside boney caves, or ribbons of cow carcass.”
— Sara Suppan

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Formulaic Halo: The Art of John Brophy

The beautifully rendered paintings of Seattle-based artist John Brophy, evoking images of the Holy Virgin, combine the divine and the empirical, innocence and malice. Religious iconography is a predominant theme, and it goes hand in hand with math, science, nature, disaster, violence, and mythology. The mystical is juxtaposed with mathematical formulae, Christian virtue is bedecked with symbols of 20th-century evil such as Nazi swastikas and atom bombs. This surreal imagery has an immediate photographic realism that is achieved through Brophy’s technique of first making a 3D study of the work using Maya, ZBrush, and Photoshop, and then executing it in oil paints à la 15th-century Flemish masters. The polished, perfect tangibility of these images makes them all the more poignant.

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