On the aforementioned Portland vacation, I was introduced to the work of 21-year-old visual artist Alex Steckly. His large-scale paintings are described as "a take on early formalist aesthetics". While I'm not positive what that means, his gorgeous and effortless works have me itching to take an art history class to find out. His last series featured rectangular canvases painted with large circles, paint drips, and feather light lines suggesting abstract planets. All of his paintings are covered with a thick coat of resin, creating a glass-like surface reminiscent of still water. I was lucky to see some other pieces from a different series, including a beautiful cream-colored square canvas with burgundy swirls, splatters, and drops, one of which is his blood. Biological art... the next frontier?
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