Michael Hussar (-1964) is an American Painter who attended the Art Center in Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.He taught Portraiture-Head Painting for almost 10 years at the same Art Center College of Design, and continues to teach portrait painting workshops in the United States and Europe.Hussar uses a combination of rococo, baroque and other classical styles combined with contemporary subject matter to create intense oil portraits.His paintings are provocative and shocking from certain angles, playing around with religious codes in a universe combining the fantastic and the horrific.Instead of canvas, Hussar prefers to work on gessoed wood panels to create paintings, as opposed to a surface mixing technique.There is an incredible beauty in the harsh colors and nightmarish realities of Hussar’s paintings, dark yet bright at the same time.Hussar describes his work as a voyeuristic snapshot of perceived humanity,  complete with “freaks and fakery; a gothic wonderland illuminating the gray area between truth and lies.”Hussar’s attachment to his paintings runs deep; each piece is a journal of sorts, allowing him to come face to face with his demons and exorcising them with each new stroke of the brush.

More of Michael Hussar’s striking paintings can be found at https://hussar.bigcartel.com/.