Exaggerated Eyes: Art by Zara Spence
Time Savers, acrylic on canvas
Zara Spence is an artist who specializes in caricature-esque figures, depicting her subjects in portrait style with exaggerated eyes and facial expressions. Zara’s works seem to draw on a range of influences, from tattoo art to classical portraiture to animation.
Impractical Jokers, Prismacolor and ink on paper
I really enjoy Zara’s deliberately stylized compositions, and especially being able to see the evolution of her distinctive style within her overall body of work on her portfolio. I find that Zara’s eyes become the focal point of all her figures – they’re not simply a motif, either, but are customized to suit the real look of each subject, simply magnified to make a certain trait even more visible. Zara uses a more realistic style in some pop-culture portraits, and it’s neat to see that the artist has a great command over straightforward realism as well as her own unique style.
Zara’s stylized portraits are generally bright and cute, with backgrounds and other objects that reflect real life. The figures themselves make me thing of the creepy-cute works of Megan Majewski, with a slight leaning into the uncanny.
