46 Realism Paintings by American Artist Bryan Drury

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Bryan Drury

Bryan Drury was born in 1980 in Salt Lake City, Utah and relocated to New York in 2001. He received his MFA Cum Laude from the New York Academy of Art in 2007 and his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2005.

He has exhibited and received awards throughout the US and Europe. Among his recent highlights, Drury had a solo museum exhibition at The Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College in 2010, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, selected Drury for their highly prestigious annual Invitational Exhibition 2011 and forthcoming solo-exhibitions include the Boca Raton Museum of Art opening November 2014 and solo-gallery exhibition in Brussels Belgium, Spring 2015.

The artist was profiled in the April 2011 issue of The Art Economist magazine’s “Artist To Watch” section. Drury’s painting Ali was included in the exhibition “Now WHAT?” at the Norton Museum of Art, the curators from the Norton Museum selected Ali as one of the twenty most engaging works exhibited during 2010 Art Basel Miami Beach.

TIME Magazine commissioned the artist for the portrait of Pope Francis for the annual Person of the Year 2014 issue. Most notably the artist was reviewed by Ken Johnson for The New York Times Art in Review, Feb 2012.

source: http://deanproject.com/bryan_drury_biography.html

Bryan Drury’s ‘Portraits’ at Dean Project
By KEN JOHNSONFEB. 2, 2012
Dean Project
511 West 25th Street, Chelsea
Through Feb. 25

At first blush Bryan Drury’s six compact panel paintings appear to be conventionally old-fashioned portraits of the kind of men and women who have the resources to commission faux-Renaissance pictures of themselves and their family members.

But the closer you look, the weirder they seem. Mr. Drury, a recent graduate of the New York Academy of Art, produces an extraordinarily intense realism that registers pores, wrinkles and grainy skin textures as well as hair, jewelry, fabric and glassy eyes so exactingly that you might suspect a high-resolution photographic under layer.

His subjects have grim, haughty expressions. “Vic,” who resembles Charlton Heston, has a disproportionately small head on his bulky, business-suited body, and he stares back at viewers with a suspicious, appraising gaze. “Jann,” whose shoulders are enveloped in an elegant taupe, fur-trimmed coat, has shiny, taut skin over the protruding bones of her skull. “Tammy” wears a luxuriantly beaded halter over her leathery bare shoulders.

There is a reptilian feeling about these people. It seems pretty clear that Mr. Drury means to portray the souls of a certain species of coldhearted rich folks. In that sense they have an amusing topicality. But there is a strangeness about them that exceeds mere caricature. They might be extraterrestrial beings who have donned human disguises in their mission to take over planet Earth.

A version of this review appears in print on February 3, 2012, on Page C30 of the New York edition with the headline: Bryan Drury: ‘Portraits’. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/arts/design/bryan-drurys-portraits-at-dean-project.html

Gallery

Bryan Drury

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