Logan Hicks

Logan Hicks is a New York-based artist known for using multiple layers of stencils to
achieve photorealistic imagery. Studying at the Maryland Institute of Contemporary
Art in the early 1990s, Hicks cut his teeth as a successful screen printer, before
being inspired to branch into stencils. During a party thrown at his 6,000 square
foot warehouse he owned in Baltimore, Hicks befriended Shepard Fairey, who
inspired him to move to Los Angeles to align with the Low Brow movement of the
90s, and concentrate on his fine art stencil work. Hicks relocated to Brooklyn in
2006 to focus on his fine art.
Called a painter with a photographer’s eye, Hicks’ work has largely focused on the
perception of the urban environment, at times humanizing its architectural angles
and structures, and at others using its vastness to explore identity, awe, and
loneliness. Through an almost old masters approach to lighting, Hicks has learned to
manipulate ordinary architectural scenes into deeply metaphorical and
contemplative imagery, compounded with his usage of color in the studio. In recent
years, the artist has delved further into his own metaphorical language, bringing in
themes like water to create dream-like imagery that explores his own meditative
contemplation on life, death, struggle and submission. Tapping into his fascination
with architecture, Hicks has also translated a history of decorative and cultural
patterns into his stencil pieces, furthering the obscured reality created by patterns
by incorporating them into photorealist stencil. To Hicks, pattern are an extension
of light, hiding reality the same way trees cast shadows on the forest floor.
Hicks’ introspective themes and imagery are pushed from sullen to vibrant to
enigmatic, with his expert use of color and meticulous control of the spray can. Over
the years, Hicks has developed his impeccable photorealistic style using stencils,
sometimes using up to 15 layers of stencil to achieve this precision. Beginning with
his own photographs, the images are translated to layer upon layer of stencil,
brought to bold dimensionality by blending colors through aerosol.
Hicks’ mastery has gained him world wide respect, and given the artist opportunity
to create permanent stencil murals in Miami, Baltimore, New York, Tunisia, Istanbul,
Paris and beyond.