Aaron Worley

I am a painter from Waxhaw, North Carolina, with a current focus on large-scale black-and-white depictions of the boxing figure. This figure, broken down by various brushstrokes and highly gestural movements of the paintbrush, serves as a “clueing...

I am a painter from Waxhaw, North Carolina, with a current focus on large-scale black-and-white depictions of the boxing figure. This figure, broken down by various brushstrokes and highly gestural movements of the paintbrush, serves as a “clueing in” for the continuous degradation of the human spirit and body, ultimately leading to a fragile and destroyed state of the boxer’s physical mien. I believe this representation of the boxer allows for a more intimate look into the figure, despite the gruesome display I usually portray them with, including exaggerated muscles, stomachs, hands, and eyes. Executed in oil paint, the long drying time between layers on canvas allows me to soak in each of the figure’s stages in transformation and continuously edit to finalize an image which satisfies me in terms of composition, value, line weight, and space. While I focus on the boxing figure as my main subject, I also execute fast observational studies with viscous enamel paint of people on the street, dogs, cats, and my overall surroundings. These works on paper give me the opportunity to expand my thought process of observing the world around me in a painterly manner.