Gus Painting

NICK LEPPMANN (b. 1991, USA) is a Seattle-based artist who depicts the often overlooked impact of our ambitions on the natural world. He mixes detailed, representational imagery with expressive mark-making to create vibrant, gestural portrayals of a world altered by even our most mundane activities. He graduated from Whitman College in 2013 and has exhibited his work throughout the Pacific Northwest, most recently at SAP Art Gallery in Kirkland, WA. My art is centered around a deep frustration with the societal expectations and consequences of growing into adulthood. Specifically, the actions and priorities of "adults," and the consequences they have internally and externally. I seek to call out the often-over-looked side effects of becoming a "well-adjusted," American adult. I do this by simultaneously acknowledging how disturbing the adult-accepted and valued state of being is to me, while honoring the people, places, things, and ways of thinking that are affected by, or left behind on, the journey to American adulthood. By focusing on developing and executing styles specific to each new concept, I am able to increase my engagement with the artistic process and limit my fixation with modeling the finished image after the normalcy of the reality I so desperately desire to break free from. I move away from my meticulous, compulsive, and at times obsessive tendencies by using vibrant colors that can't perfectly match the real world. My work is both cynical and reverential in the face of inevitable change. While I highlight the issues I find with the current state of being and I pay respect to the characters that have been altered by these issues, I also acknowledge and memorialize the change itself. Whether we like it or not, change will come, and I think it’s valuable to ask if it’s a change for the better.