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Artist Statement

Ocean Waring is a New York City native. His passion for the arts has been prevalent since childhood but it wasn't until his late teens that he honed in on painting specifically. During high school he began working retail at a skate shop in NoHo. It was here he discovered his passion for the arts and fashion- pursuing a modelling career whilst studying at The Art Students League in 2017. Although mostly self taught it was here (through both color theory and life drawing classes) that Ocean learned the important fundamentals that influence his work today. Much of his work is an exploration into the essence of ideas, "why something is the way it is".

Ocean's current work is a study on the language used in society and aesthetic of magazines. As we are inundated with constant information inspiration is pulled from a multitude of sources, ultimately in a search for the essence of their appeal and aesthetic; boiling it down to its core elements. The paintings feature his expressive cartoon-like nudes against subdued colors and abstract forms accompanied by graphic text on paper.

In his series the paintings become the magazines and a soapbox for useless information; representing an art form used as a popular source of visual entertainment and social marketing. Posing the artwork in this way Ocean seeks to address how painting now shares a similar fate, an object once used as a main source of information now commonly consumed as a relic of commerce and identity.