FOUR FIGURATIVE Artists to Watch
Expressive figuration refers to a 20th-century art movement that combines figurative representation with expressive emotional content. This style, also known as Figurative Expressionism, emerged in the United States, particularly in Boston characterized by its human-centered and rationalist approach. The Bay Area Figurative Movement and the Chicago Imagists, who were a group of figurative artists who emerged in Chicago in the mid-1960s. They used vibrant color, bold lines, and depicted the human body grossly distorted and highly stylized. Bay Area Figurative Movement was widely seen as the first significant North-American art movement to be based on the West Coast. With their sunlit terraces, moody seascapes, and atmospheric city scenes.
In an era shaped by digital media and conceptual installations, a new wave of artists is reimagining figuration through their own style and point of view. By incorporating personal storytelling and representing the fleeting moments of everyday life with hybrid practices and often a surrealist tone or dream-like affect, these artists are pushing the boundaries of what contemporary figurative art can be today. Through portraits, still life, and figure painting, they blur boundaries between abstraction and realism, their work challenges mid 20th-Century heroes.
Kate Florence is a British artist known for large-scale figurative paintings that unfold like surreal Western dreams. She is a process-driven painter who combines traditional and contemporary art forms, drawing from her childhood memories in the UK and daily life in Australia. Her work elevates everyday experiences through gesture and form, often featuring musicians, horses, and cowboy-like figures in rich earth tones.
Ollie LeBrocq started experimenting in paint in 2012, as the antidote to his digital work. His painting practice largely centres around still life, and representations of people.
“I continue work showing my interest in light, form and geometry, while employing relatively simple imagery. In recent years I have moved my work towards a more playful dialogue, with greater emphasis on colour and graphical elements. The narrative is open and non-prescriptive, that invites viewers to engage and create their own interpretations.”
Jess Cochrane creates figurative oil paintings inspired by everyday life. Drawing from her personal photo archive, she transforms the digital into the physical with expressive brushwork that captures the fleeting details of contemporary life.She seamlessly blends 19th and 20th century painting styles with contemporary subject matter, paying homage to the colours and compositions of Post-impressionists.
Sara Gregory is a British portrait and figurative painter based in London. She studied Fine Art at Sturbridge College of Art and worked for around 25 years as an art teacher before pursuing her practice full-time. Her work focuses on expressive portraiture that conveys emotion, vulnerability and psychological states. She gained wider recognition with a series of self-portraits exploring her personal experience of perimenopause over a period of seven years.
