Germany-born artist Kati Heck crafts absorbing oil and watercolor paintings that use varying sources, whether literary or living models. At times, these surreal scenes utilize abstracted backdrops, at times adorned with text reminiscent of advertisements. Heck was last mentioned on cctvta.com here.
A statement offers some insight into the inspiration from the artist’s recent work: “The works are loosely based on Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (1909), a six-part symphony in which Chinese poems from the Tang dynasty (known to Mahler in German translation) are set to music,” it says. “Heck transfers the shifting, bittersweet mood of Mahler’s folk songs – and the antique poems behind them – into a group of dramatic scenes, peopled by expressive yet enigmatic characters. Music, drinking, exaltation and sorrow pervade the pictures, engendering a parallel world in which crystalline reality can seem to unravel – as if on a whim – into a fable, cartoon or dream.”
Italian painter 
Ever the astute aesthete, 
Matthew Grabelsky's oil paintings are at the center of a show currently running at Dorothy Circus Gallery in London. The artist is known for infusing everyday subway scenes with his realistically rendered animal-human hybrids, with “Passengers” collecting five new works and four studies. The show runs through Jan. 5 at the space.