Undisclosed-Recipients, charcoal and acrylic on canvas

Stylianos Schicho is a painter from Vienna, Austria. Working in charcoal and acrylic paint, the artist creates layered images that combine exaggerated human figures with overlapping geometric constructs.

The Garden is Closing in 10 Minutes, charcoal and acrylic on canvas

I enjoy the illustrative aesthetic that comes from Schicho’s use of charcoal in addition to paint. While the artist’s painting style is fairly tight on its own, the addition of hard outlines and texture lines in features like hair and feathers creates a sense that each painting could be a sketch made in pen or colored pencil. The figures themselves are often incomplete in some fashion, with detail poured into faces and eyes, but parts of the body trailing off or left out of the work entirely. This, in combination with the geometric lines, gives the impression that we are seeing a small fragment of a larger image.

Schicho also creates collections of small paintings and drawings, hanging them together as a sort of assemblage. The individual works are simpler, but together tell a fascinating story.

Inequality (studio view)