Roq La Rue is very pleased to welcome back represented artist John Brophy for a solo show of new works entitled "Sages and Sirens". Brophy's unusual painting style is due to his highly labor intensive creation process. Each work is first digitally rendered in a 3d modeling program by Brophy- with every detail added, arranged and lit inside the program. Once Brophy is satisfied with the image, he then uses that as a guide to completely recreate the image by hand in oil paint on panel, often making his own oil paints and finishes from scratch. His strict adherence to recreating the digital image creates a strange discordance- a sense of "uncanny valley"- we obviously know the "characters" portrayed but cause us to question what we really know about them, what is real and what is projected by the viewer.

For this show, Brophy uses his blend of pop culture icons rendered in a traditional European classical portraiture style to pay homage to heroes Abraham Lincoln and Freddie Mercury, as well as social commentary through the depictions of a few Star Trek characters.

John Brophy will be traveling from his home in Ireland to Seattle for the opening- we hope you will join us for the opening night party if you are able!

To view the show: Please click on a thumbnail to see each work. Information about each piece will appear when you hover over the image. On mobile, click the white dot in the bottom right corner to view the information. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions!