Figurative Works - ethan caflisch

Caflisch initially began this new body of work — his first foray into figurative painting — by taking photographs of people from behind, typically in London’s tube stations. He then abstracts and translates these photographs into tightly cropped paintings on canvas, flattening and reducing the figures into simplified forms and shapes to convey the notion of the human body. The anonymity of his subjects is furthered by his use of bold, imaginative color, which he directly references in the titles of the works.

Caflisch’s process of creating these paintings evolved into a practice of sketching the figures without the photographic references, and most recently, he introduced an element of anticipation through paused action by using the concept of film stills as a starting off point while continuing to look at the figure in place and space.