Travis Louie 'Horned Sparkletail' Print Available

Artist: Travis Louie
Title: Horned Sparkletail
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: 16 x 20 Inches
Edition: UNSURE
Prices: $170

 

Travis Louie crafts monochrome “family albums” for a parallel Victorian planet. Born 1964 in Queens, New York, he grew up on Atomic-Age sci-fi, German Expressionist films and Saturday comic-shop runs, influences that still drip from his brushes today. After a Pratt Institute BFA in Communication Design he freelanced as an illustrator, but by 2003 the tiny sketches and marginalia in his journals had snowballed into a fully fledged mythology: a world of gentle werewolves, goat-cursed accountants, vibrating engine-drivers and other “human oddities” who queue up to have their formal portraits taken as proof they existed.

Working on smooth board, Louie lays down tight graphite drawings, then builds velvety grey tones with thin acrylic washes until the figures feel like antique tintypes unearthed in a dusty attic. The faux-historical finish is deliberate; it lets him smuggle modern themes; racism, xenophobia, immigrant otherness into faces that appear reassuringly vintage. Each sitter arrives with a micro-biography penned by the artist, turning exhibitions into storybook parlours where viewers read how a hedge-sleeping fur-being or top-hatted spider-lover earned their place in society.

The conceit has travelled far: from “Art From the New World” at Bristol City Museum to “Pop Surrealism” in Spoleto, Italy, and the pages of Hi-Fructose and Juxtapoz. Institutions such as the Virginia MOCA and numerous private collectors now count Louie’s portraits among their treasures, ensuring his quiet cast of misfits continues to petition for empathy, curiosity and wonder one sepia stare at a time.