I stumbled across the work of Joe Sorren from a link on another artist's site and was immediately taken with his strange, but beautiful characters. There is a real sadness in these works, a desperate vulnerability in the characters that doesn't quite match their youthful appearances. It is this contradiction that makes Sorren's work so effective for me.
This from La Luz de Jesus about Sorren:
"Sorren paints mostly in acrylics, sometimes in pencil and crayon, creating his delicate, muted and inarguably beautiful paintings. Influenced by a variety of artists from Vermeer and Leighton to Twomby and Kerouac, Sorren is noticeably interested in the power that lies within stillness."
