8 independent artists whose work will elevate your decor game
So, you just moved into your new place; but the generic movie posters and Polaroids from your old dorm room aren’t going to start a conversation with your new Tinder boo or make a good backdrop for your Insta pics.
Your walls need a little culture.
Here are some artists to get the inspiration and the conversation flowing.
Kenneth Zenz // @zenz.k
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1zHxcKFIEx/
Kenneth is a trans artist based in Chicago, Illinois. His work often features body-horror: subjects have extra limbs, dismembered floating appendages, or find themselves in peculiar, fantastically horrific predicaments. Borrowing compositions and visual motifs from religious artwork, he depicts gender and chronic illness. He mostly works in watercolor.
Gummy Gunk // @unfiltered.ooze
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC3_MicFUNf/
Gumi is a nonbinary mixed media artist based in Honolulu, Hawai’i. They mostly work in fiber, making “blobs” of pink, brown and pastels. They also paint and collage, highlighting an aesthetic of nostalgia. Their products include charms, zines, stickers, pins, magnets and prints.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAQo2J1lPvH/
Mack Brim // @madamemack
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDzMARbBIj5/
Brim’s work explores femininity with a “previously disregarded aesthetic vision.” Her hyper-realistic oil paintings are a mostly neutral palette with a touch of pink, often including high-contrast glittery highlights. She is based in Dallas, Texas.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDhzexgBuPo/
Jimmy Knives // @jimmy_knives
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_8HwkHjvgG/
Knives is a digital illustrator whose creepy-cute, often gory work combines warm and cool tones to make a shocking palette. Negative space is sparse in his compositions, which usually jam-packed with borders, textures, and gruesomely adorable icons.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9VclG_DzlN/
Allison Aboud // @allisonaboudart
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-KkUoJhcP7/
Aboud is an acrylic painter from the East Bay, California. Thick black sections in her paintings indicate her love of stained glass and the cubist tradition. Her work features a palette of tame, muted neutral colors. She also works with textile.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAZiqXCDv_C/
Trude Is Krude // @trudeiskrude
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFH5RRxBzcE/
Tascha is an illustrator from Berlin, Germany. Her work is reminiscent of the pictures in The Little Prince, using simplified subjects in whimsical environments. Her palette is mostly blue, ochre, and terra cotta, deliberately placed in an otherwise empty canvas.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBfiihLhzic/
Vacuum Chan // @vacuumch_
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByV-dkyojFP/
Vacuum is a digital art student and freelancer. Mostly female subjects meet the viewer’s gaze, veiled in dark palettes with pops of neon.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwc4-LInXgW/
Linnea Serte // @turndecassette
https://www.instagram.com/p/CE8-iqJAuZQ/
Most people know this artist for placid images of frogs, but her other works are just as beautiful. Her Ghibli-esque representations of animals in blues and greens give a relaxed vibe.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B7odUULjpqK/
If you don’t want to get rid of the Pulp Fiction poster and the Polaroids from Firefly, most independents artists supply stickers, T-shirts or pins that are great as gifts, too.