Roaming the metaphysical spaces between dreams and reality, Eli McMullen draws on the familiarity of suburban and wooded landscapes to bid us into dreamlike worlds. Plumbing the interplay of perception and imagination, his acrylic paintings invite us into moments of wonder and transcendence.
The Richmond, Virginia-based artist’s forthcoming solo exhibition, Sleep Walk at Thinkspace Projects, explores relationships between nostalgia, spirituality, nature, and psychological phenomena. He celebrates “fleeting moments that feel suspended in time, glimmers that quietly urge to be searched,” the gallery says.
Sleep Walk welcomes viewers into nighttime forest scenes that glow with geometric light forms, altar-like architecture, and prismatic reflections. Titles like “Desire Path Finder,” “Liminal Bridge,” and “Kismet Gateway” highlight the essence of links, portals, metamorphoses, and in-between spaces.
The show runs May 3 to 24 in Los Angeles. See more on McMullen’s website and Instagram.
“Dream Weaver” (2025), acrylic on panel, 20 × 24 inches“Embers Rest” (2025), acrylic on panel, 18 × 24 inches“Draped Shrine” (2025), acrylic on panel, 11 × 14 inches“Liminal Bridge” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 × 20 inches“Fractal Grove” (2025), acrylic on panel, 11 × 14 inches“Kismet Gateway” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 × 20 inches
Confined within tiny, ornate frames until inevitably spilling over the edge, Barry Hazard’s expansive landscapes are “spaces for reflecting, contemplation, and surrendering to something larger and more timeless than us,” he says.
Inspired by vast notions such as the relationship between humans and nature and ecological conflict, Hazard (previously) translates broad themes into miniature works. The Brooklyn-based artist employs minuscule frames, wood panel, and acrylic to depict a multitude of scenes from mudslides and flower farms to glaciers and snowy roads. With so much contained in such small compositions, Hazard describes his process as “a simple way to rapidly engage in an artistic process, with an ultra-manageable scale.”
“Flower Farm” (2024), 6 x 5 x 7 inches
Last year for New York’s Upstate Art Weekend, the artist expanded upon his miniature work, delving into a project on the opposite end of the scale of proportions. “Walk-In Painting” culminates Hazard’s carpentry and muralist experience, uniquely activating his otherwise tiny paintings. Viewers are able to step into a rolling scenery teeming with vibrant blooms, tufts of bushes, and sweeping mountains in the distance, creating an experience that is “both fictional and non-fictional,” the artist explains.
Hazard has also ventured into the realm of batch production through the technique of resin casting. While the artist typically uses more traditional materials for his small works, he has been able to create a sizable amount of gifts for friends and family by creating numerous blank casted bases before painting each by hand.
Find more work on the artist’s website, and take a look into his process on Instagram.
“Mudslide” (2024), 9 x 7 x 2 inches“Walk-In Painting” (2024), 8 x 10 x 7 feet“Purple Plain” (2023), 1 x 1.5 inches“Sunset Glacier” (2023), 9 x 8 x 2 inches“Flood Zone” (2024), 8 x 7 x 3 inches
When Shyama Golden would find herself disappointed as a child, her parents would often respond with “too bad, so sad, maybe next birth.” Invoking reincarnation and the possibilities of an alternative life, this phrase continues to reinvent itself in Golden’s practice.
On view next month at PM/AM, Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth presents a collection of lush paintings filled with surreal details, earthly textures, and a recurring blue-faced character. As with earlier series, the artist invents a vast, magical narrative that flows through each of the works, this time as a four-act performance.
“Bevis Bawa Garden, 1936” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches
The mythical storyline unfolds with a collection of diptychs comprised of a large-scale scene and a close-up companion offering another perspective. These pairings visualize a sort of alternative past for the artist as she explores the inexorable twining of personal agency and larger forces like fate and collective experiences that shape our identities.
In Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth, Golden opens with her blue-faced alter ego named Maya, a rendition of the Sri Lankan folklore tricksters known as yakkas. Dressed in a fur suit, the character lies in the roadway, her chest split open to reveal a bright red wound. A bag of oranges is littered nearby.
The counterpart to this titular work is a self-portrait of the artist barefoot, posed against the rocky roadside. She stands atop cracked pavement while oranges spill blood-red juice on the ground. Introspective yet invoking the universal, the pair grasps at the tension between unexpected violence and death, whether metaphoric or real, and the ability to find resilience in the face of adversity.
Golden’s series continues to unravel as a series of contrasts. She considers fame, erasure, and where freedom resides within the two, along with the notion of sole creative geniuses mistakenly thought to operate outside the whole. And in “Mexican Texas, 1862,” the artist tackles the porous, if not arbitrarily drawn, boundaries that tie us to states and nations and ultimately, change over time.
“Stories of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 36 inches
In addition to her oil paintings for this exhibition, Golden is collaborating on an animated video project with her husband, the director Paul Trillo, who will build an AI model trained exclusively on Golden’s paintings. Given the hesitation by many artists about the role of artificial intelligence and intellectual property, the pair is interested in confronting the issue from the perspective of influence and the myth of the lone genius. Golden writes:
Many artists who are canonized are actually working in a style that they didn’t invent but that was part of a movement arising out of their time and location. AI is deeply unsettling to artists in the West because we romanticise the artist as a singular figure, who is only influenced by one to three other clearly defined artists, giving them a lineage of artistic inheritance and perceived value.
Golden also ties this idea to “the clout needed to command a price for our work,” which she suggests is simply another narrative device in the act of self-mythologizing.
If you’re in London, Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth runs from May 23 to July 1. Find more from Golden on her website and Instagram.
“Mexican Texas, 1862” (2025), oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches“A Myth of My Own Creation” (2025), oil on linen, 66 x 48 inches“You Seeing What I’m Seeing” (2025), oil on linen, 48 x 48 inches“The Sound of One Bird Colliding” (2025), oil on linen, 24 x 30 inches
He was a musician, a songwriter, an actor, and a legend. But did you know he started as a painter?
A Soulful Art Legacy: Artworks Made by David Bowie
Just like many others around the globe, I was saddened by the departure of a great artist of our age – David Bowie. I have to admit, though, that my sadness is somehow selfish. I knew it wouldn’t be long until my turn to face the end of this life, just like my favorite artist who sang these songs to me and grew up listening to them. However, there are some artists behind the mask of sadness who are simply prompted to promote their freshly made paintings and prints to profit from shocked fans who want to pay tribute to their hero. On that very same day!
David Bowie’s own art
So, instead of sharing art made on the death of David Bowie, here I would like to share some of his very own body of work. Let’s pay real tribute to him by celebrating his creativity! David Bowie’s paintings show a knowledgeable approach to art, influenced by Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Francis Bacon, and Francis Picabia…
German Expressionism
In the spring of 1976, he and Iggy Pop left America ‘and moved to Berlin. They were fleeing the artistic cannibalism of Los Angeles. Berlin gave him access to a new life and new inspirations. And not just about music: Bowie, whose affinity for German Expressionist art far pre-dated his residence in Berlin, executed then a great number of lithographs and many portrait paintings. It had a great influence on his songwriting. He clearly isn’t a master, and there is a technical lack of practice to be seen, but there is also passion and great sensitivity.
“You aren’t dead as long as somebody is thinking about you.” Bertolt Brecht
