Dragon, Crab, and Turtle is proud to present “Heartland: Recent Portraits , Landscapes and Still Life Paintings of Rachid Bouhamidi” 
 
Rachid Bouhamidi was born in Palm Springs in 1981 and raised in Southern California to a French mother and a Moroccan father. He started drawing about the time he first learned to pick up a pencil and took to the idea of being a serious artist when he was 14 after seeing an exhibition of etchings by Francisco Goya in Pomona, California. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and his MFA from Boston University in 2010. The formal and figurative concerns in Bouhamidi’s work draw inspiration from his mixed cultural identity, from observations of the natural world and from popular art forms such as comics and by the working class culture of the Hispanic neighborhoods of Los Angeles. 
 
Bouhamidi’s work is heavy on vibrant colors as well as on repetitions of pattern-like bodies and exotic plant forms. His catchy work sometimes juxtaposes portraits in interesting angular ways while also recalling colors and motifs from the 20th c. work of Max Beckmann. His mixed perspective (grounded in Moroccan, French, American, and global culture) renders his work interesting with different layers of meaning.
 
This exhibition brings together seventeen recent paintings that depict portraits of people, things and places that are close to my life. Many of the works were painted in one session and demonstrate my interest in observational painting as well as my continued investigation of formal notions of design, pattern and the plasticity of paint itself. Beyond portraying the mundane and familiar in my life is the desire for me to impart whatever I make with a kind of charge and resonating energy that may last well after the viewer has seen my work.
 
Opens Sunday, October 14, 2023 from 5pm - 7pm at Dragon Crab and Turtle. 2814, Locust Street, St. Louis, Mo 63103