Artist Feature: Dannika Rose Sullivan
"A masterful blend of styles that entangle the subject’s energy with the viewer."
In an era of smiling selfies and curated social media feeds, true emotion can be buried behind a facade of positivity. Portraiture has long been a powerful method of conveying the subject’s more captivating expressions, but Dannika Rose Sullivan pushes deeper into the spectrum. She creates a masterful blend of styles that entangle the subject’s energy with the viewer. The viewer can feel the sensation of each emotion being conveyed; both through the delicate details in the carefully rendered faces and in the strong intentional brush strokes and colors in the background. The artist creates a masterful combination In the portrait “Swipe” the bold strokes in the oil paint mimic the motion of the subject’s hand. In “Unrest” the texture radiates from the subject’s head, signaling an alert, uneasy feeling. Her paintings tap in to the truth behind the smiling mask and illuminate the hidden emotions of our modern culture.
From the Artist:
Dannika Rose Sullivan is creating realistic portraits in oil and incorporating elements of impressionism and surrealism to further portray emotion in her pieces. Through her love of dramatic colors and texture she captures subtle expressions in her subjects to evoke feelings of anxiety, exhaustion, and reflection – emotional states she and many others know very well in today’s world of worry and unease.
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Dannika Rose Sullivan is a self taught portrait artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her passion for art was found at a young age, but her style began to develop when she was introduced to pastel pencils in college which allowed her to branch out into a new world of color and texture.