Sam McKinniss

Painter Sam McKinniss sources his works from images of recent pop cultural phenomena he finds using Google Image Search, such as the much celebrated and widely discussed portrait of Prince, painted and exhibited in New York immediately following the beloved pop star's unti-mely death. He is inspired by themes or narratives focu-sing on romance or tragedy, beauty, perversion, innocence and its destruction. Most often his paintings are portraits of celebrities such as movie stars and musicians, while at other times he finds landscapes or animals as suitable subject matter. Discussing his studio practice in a recent interview, McKinniss was quoted, “[I'm] trying to tell some kind of almost cinematic story, and trying to cast it with characters who suit whatever mood I’m in.” Sam McKinniss (b. 1985, Northfield, Minnesota) earned a MFA at New York University. Recent solo exhi-bitions were held in Los Angeles and New York. His work is currently on view in a major group exhibition, ‘The Lure of the Dark: Contemporary Painters Conjure The Night’, curated by Susan Cross at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.