Expressive Color-Filled Portraits of Friends and Family by Hope Gangloff

Artist Hope Gangloff captures the personalities of her friends and family in brightly colored large-scale portraits. Gangloff’s acrylic and collage paintings show her subjects in intimate settings—often domestic interiors—in poses of relaxation or quiet focus. The artist’s strong but gestural lines create defined shapes that are filled with repetitive marks and bright patterns.

Gangloff gives equal textural attention to all areas of the painting, which draws the viewer’s eye to every detail and also contextualizes each portrait sitter in a unique set of surroundings. (If you’re intrigued by this flat field patterning, also take a look at Édouard Vuillard‘s paintings). The New York-based artist’s large body of work consists of a substantial number of these vibrant portraits.

In an interview with Vogue, Gangloff describes her choice of subject as akin to rock climbing: “An outsider who doesn’t look at a lot of art might not understand why I paint similar things over and over again… But there are always micro movements. I’m always working through problems. Rock climbers look for little changes in rocks to help them climb and keep going. When I look at a painting, I’m also looking for the move that’s going to set off something else. The whole painting is like a problem I’m trying to solve.”

Gangloff studied at Cooper Union and is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery in New York. In 2017 she was the inaugural artist selected for Stanford University’s Diekman Contemporary Commissions Program, which included a solo show and a weeklong artist residency during which Gangloff painted publicly in the Cantor Arts Center atrium. You can see more of the artist’s portraits, as well as her still life paintings, ink drawings, and political posters on her website and Instagram.