Those who follow in the footsteps of the Old Masters would gasp at Seth Alverson’s raw depictions of the human body. From the Renaissance’s advancements in rendering the idealized anatomy to today’s Photoshopped magazine covers, Western culture has an ongoing obsession with depicting the nude figure in ways that few of us can actually live up to. Alverson throws these conventions out the window with his oil paintings.
While some of the pieces seem intentionally grotesque, others bluntly depict parts of the body we are often told we should be ashamed of — cellulite on a plump bottom, sagging breasts, bellies that protrude. While those works seem to mock the media status quo, other pieces rightly warrant our aversion: one painting shows a stack of dismembered legs while another depicts a mangled hand. Alverson makes the body his communication tool, but his ultimate message is far from clear cut.
Deirdre Sullivan-Beeman's "Heavy Water" brings new paintings from the surrealist to La Luz de Jesus Gallery, inspired by the substance created from tap water for nuclear energy research in the 1930s. Using oil and egg tempera on aluminum panel, the artist’s works have a particular glow, implementing centuries-old techniques for the effect. The show runs Oct. 4-27 at the space.
In the oil and acrylic paintings of 
Without all of the clothes and the accessories of the modern Homo sapiens, human anatomy alone is quite strange and our smug arrogance, rather misplaced. Visualize a baby kitten next to a human infant, and you’ll see how oafish we must appear to surrounding species. New York-based artist