Scott Michael Ackerman (b.1982) has tapped into the narrative of folk law, fairy tale and the history of figurative painting in his new body of work Sharp Teeth. Inhabited by a cast of wild beasts and peculiar characters, the paintings seem to hover somewhere between child-like enchantment and a shadowy place of suggested violence and the uncanny. For Ackerman, they express the travails of everyday life, interwoven with a dream-like imaginary world. He is exploring themes of “companionship, loneliness and a sense of wonder”. Working at times within the traditions of Folk and Outsider art, Ackerman frequently utilizes unorthodox materials and found objects in his practice. As a self-taught artist he considers his approach as primitive and unconventional, rejecting the boundaries of traditional culture.

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