For four decades I’ve had a rigorous studio practice, creating brilliantly colored motifs that shift and circle back on themselves over time. Working with oil paint on canvas and paper, I reference geometric shapes and pop graphics. I paint circles, dots, ice-cream cones, combs, cigarette butts, lips, words, and eyeballs, to name a few. These forms star in my paintings and are constantly being recombined in new ways. Erratic patterning and bright colors are layered to surprise a viewer’s sensibilities, representing familiar

 Through glitch-inspired self-portraiture I study the desire, failure, and dissonance associated with portraying an idealized self for a physical and digital audience. I consider how those of us coming of age with the Internet and social media have constructed alternative identities online—fantasies, really—that bear little resemblance to our IRL selves. Using paint, projected video, and augmented reality, I transform my image beyond believable authenticity: it is fragmented, replicated, and distorted to the point of becoming disconnected from my real body.

 As a queer child of an Ecuadorian immigrant, I explore the mythologies of demons through paintings and tapestries that offer alternative narratives to their often one-dimensional portrayals. My work delves into the histories of those who are marginalized, shedding light on their stories and the systems that other them.

 I use Spanglish, a language that I and many others in the United States speak, to reflect on our contemporary moment. My work explores the interaction of Spanglish with Latin and American culture and politics, Latin music, slang, insults, jokes, and other aspects of popular media. The exchange between Spanish and English is meant to communicate new thinking through playful yet provocative bilingual phrases, expressions, and unstructured ideas of language. I work with collage and assemblage paintings, sculptures, and

 Monica Kim Garza has gained widespread recognition through her vibrant portrayals of women of color. The Mexican Korean artist rejects the male gaze, celebrating confident and uninhibited women through her figurative works. Visually, her paintings are lively and instantly recognizable, presenting women engaging in leisurely activities and enjoying themselves. Garza experiments with form and contour, reimagining the classical female nude in oil, acrylic, and collage on canvas. Her impressionist and expressionistic brushwork and figures are pushed into abstraction, the heavy layering of

 As young as age three, Corinne Forrester became a student of watercolors and acrylics while under the tutelage of her maternal grandmother. Art and creativity have steadily been an integral part of her daily bread. Her heritage is a significant source of personal pride and curiosity. She is deeply inspired by “the stories of us”; her work centers around the multifaceted beauty and the sometimes sad yet triumphant relativity of personal exploration. She often uses acrylics and metallic powders on wood panels, creating

 Dustin Emory’s work largely explores the human response to confinement through a black-and-white lens. Using unconventional angles and surrealist devices while also sticking to a strict palette, Emory explores how limitations can create a boundless arena. Emory’s fascination with limitation and confinement was accelerated in the midst of the pandemic when he found himself negotiating with his perception of his father’s incarceration. The issue has always been prevalent in his process but in conceiving the works of the past two years he has confronted it head-on.

 My work examines decolonization as a cultural and historical confrontation with a hegemonic system of thought. Working primarily in portraiture, I critically interrogate old narratives, suggesting an introspective appraisal of the politicization of Blackness. My work features an intensity of expression as a way of forcing a necessary interrogation of perceptions associated with the ideology of imagery, particularly the Black countenance. I layer and mix my pigments directly on the surface using oil stick on canvas.

 Through paint I explore my friends and family in quiet, introspective moments. These compositions reveal a vulnerable side of the human experience that is only unveiled when people are not performing or fulfilling societal roles. I am interested in the inner person as well as what they project. Using richly painted surfaces with mesmerizing patterns and lush vegetation, I captivate the viewer to encourage self-reflection and curiosity.

 It is exhausting to exist as a multiracial man in America. In 1978, my West Indian mother entered the United States by way of New York. In order to safely assimilate, my mother relinquished her Caribbean heritage. She later met my African American father at a funeral, fell in love, relocated to the South and learned to cooked soul food. I had an older brother. In 2018 he was shot and killed by a cop. My work investigates the faceted constructs of self-identity and its relational dependence upon both the living and dead. Through humor, humble