Artist Profile Gabriel Zea

Zea’s cinematic figurative oil paintings interrogate the friction between ideological devotion and our inherent fragility.

Artist Biography

Born in Singapore to a Colombian family, and raised in a multicultural community in Houston, TX, my paintings envision a seductive world where figures are strict adherents of the power of some kind of ideal, and an association with violence or self-destruction is either explicit or never too far away. I received my BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and then my MFA soon after from the New York Academy of art. During undergrad I spent an influential year in Japan studying printmaking and the Japanese language, and later upon finishing my MFA I spent another year attending artist residencies in Spain, Germany, Russia, and here in the United States. My paintings have exhibited internationally in London, Germany, Spain, and Japan, as well domestically in NYC, Miami, and other cities. After living and working in NYC for several years, and being fortunate to travel extensively for work, I recently relocated to Seattle in order to be closer to family. View my artwork at www.gabrielzeaart.com.