Collection: Luke Painter

Luke Painter is an artist and professor working in Toronto. Recent exhibitions of his work include: Modern Wand at Cambridge Galleries (solo 2017) and Ways of Something at the Whitney Museum of American Art (group 2016). 

As a practicing artist, drawing has been at the core of my work and an important way of researching art and design movements, technology and contemporary life. In the past few years, I have made drawings that sample and purposely reimagine an alternative direction for historical and contemporary patterns. These patterns, which are often outliers in a long tradition, can include domestic and anthropomorphic imagery and come from many sources including 18th century British textiles and early 8-bit, 1980’s videogames. I have introduced these patterns into fictional, domestic spaces where they take on narrative qualities that are heightened through their change of scale and context in the picture plane.