Beau Gabriel is a fine artist working from Britannia Works in Fish Island and was the runner-up of the 2019 Hackney WickED Art Prize competition. He was born in New York City and grew up in its northern suburbs. He studied in Yale University for his undergraduate degree and took his MA in Illustration at the Royal College of Art. His art explores the evolving nature of figurative representation. A fascination with Renaissance and Baroque art pervades his work, merging with the modern world of online influence and self-styling.
“Ultimately, painting is a rather crude, even louche medium. It’s essentially dirt and bits of mineral suspended in oil. Historically, painting always balanced a high, sensual refinement with a rawness and primitive experimentation: The Renaissance palette contained all manner of toxic pigments, and the daily existence of painters was often anything but glamorous… Painting lets me revel in the inherent beauty of these images, while also playing in various ways with the historical threads that underly the medium in general, and the evolution of figurative representation in particular. It also allows for a good deal of humour. At the end of the day, we all know that Instagram is ridiculous, but that is what makes it so wonderful.” Excerpt from interview by Floorr Magazine, issue 21, 2019
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