The Portraits of Illustrator John Vogl

 

In the work of Illustrator John Vogl, you find his crisp lines — his hand-drawn pen strokes stay uniform. Together they create the wavering forms of deer, birds, and all manner of living creature. There is a joy to his illustrations, a search for happiness and laughter amongst the seriousness of the everyday world. In his gig posters for The Avett Brothers, The Dave Matthews Band, and others, Vogl draws his work close to perfect before steering towards the surreal.

Vogl’s recent run of female portraits push beyond what he has done before — there is still the sense of the perfect, these women, their eyes are alive. Seen together, they create a patchwork of the human face — those shapes that seem so complex, but Vogl gets them down to their simple forms. In the dash and stroke of color, a person lives through thoughtful lines.

The series of portraits reveal another side of Vogl, or more so, give the viewer a fresh look at what has always been there — his sense of reality and how he is able to stretch it, delete and fragment. No matter the abstraction and disparate brush strokes, Vogl keeps his focus on capturing the figure, the life behind the image.