Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Travis Louie

Travis Louie was born in Queens, New York, in the area near the site of the 1964 World’s Fair.

He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where he graduated in 1990 with a BFA in Communication Design, and the intent of pursuing a freelance illustration career.The visual style of Louie’s work is mostly influenced by the lighting and atmosphere of German Expressionist and Film Noir motion pictures from the Silent Era to the late 1950’s. The results are tridimensional portraits from an alternative universe that seemingly may or may not have existed.Louie’s world is grounded in Victorian and Edwardian times, inhabited by human oddities, mythical beings, and otherworldly, grotesque characters who appear to have requested their formal portraits to state their existence and place in society and history.

To achieve the dramatic “mood” in his paintings, the art is produced primarily in black and white or limited color.

Louie uses acrylic paints over tight graphite drawings on smooth grounds, like “plate” finish illustration board or finely sanded, primed wood panels.

The works reflect, in Louie’s words, a desire for a world in which fear of “the other” might be superseded by curiosity and acceptance of those who are different.More of Travis Louie’s marvelous surrealistic art can be found at https://www.travislouieart.com/.