Chimerical - a solo show by Karla Ortiz

Opening Night Reception: Thursday, August 4th (6-10PM)

On View: August 4th - August 27th, 2016

Spoke Art is pleased to present Chimerical, a debut solo exhibition by San Francisco based artist Karla Ortiz. An unearthly display of new illustrations and paintings, Ortiz’s mystic figures are draped in delicately rendered robes, a brooding darkness and mystery. Steeped in their own lore, each work extends an invitation into the artist’s whimsical yet ghostly fantasy world.

A natural (and professional) storyteller, Karla Ortiz draws from her years as a concept artist in the gaming and film industries. Ortiz sites the Brothers Grimm and other mythological stories as influences when creating narratives for her haunting work. For her debut solo exhibition, Ortiz has created a collection of oil paintings on panel and graphite drawings on paper, each piece displaying the “the mythical and odd nature" signature to her work.

Ortiz’s fine art works offer a different perspective from the artist, including robed and draped figures reminiscent of Roman marble sculpture, brooding dandies and mystical tribeswomen. Each character is at once vulnerable and powerful with a sense of withheld knowledge and a dark force. Inhabiting ethereal forests, antique interiors and other worldly spaces her subjects invite the viewer into their intimate and ghostly landscapes. Imbuing her figures with a sense of melancholy, each one emotes a quiet sense of defiance.

Ortiz is visually influenced by prolific figurative painters John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, and Norman Rockwell. Victorian aesthetics, cinematic framing, pre-Raphaelite painters and artists from the Golden Age of Illustration also figure prominently in Ortiz’s influences that contribute to her mastery of light and drafting. Her work is painstakingly detailed while preserving the motion and texture of her mark-making. Ortiz’s richly detailed, illustrative works are also influenced by mythology and folklore.

Ortiz has been a concept artist and illustrator on projects for Ubisoft, NCSoft, Wizards of the Coast, Ace Books and Marvel Film Studios. She has worked on characters from the fantasy card game Magic the Gathering, acclaimed fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, World of Warcraft, the Marvel universe and beyond. Working in both digital and traditional media, Ortiz brings these vastly detailed fantasy worlds to life in her professional and personal fine art work.