Andrea Luper’s Attention to the Subjectivity of Figure in Contemporary Portraiture

In Brooklyn, New York I visited the studio of Andrea Luper (b. 1995). An artist with a dense sense of self awareness and objectivity of femininity shine through her self portraiture, figurative structure and large scale paintings. She draws attention to the subjectivity of the figure and details that raise discussion about viewer’s prior perceptions and perspectives.

Her use of acrylic, canvas,and collection of Moleskin sketchbooks. She displays her dedication towards creating vibrant, engaging and androgynous characters that challenge the conventional notions of identity.

To start Andrea, can you tell us who you are as an artist — not just your background, but what you’re trying to express through your work right now?

I think ultimately I’m a treasure hunter. The same way I’ve had poet friends describe to me the ephemeral nature of their search, for those pauses or moments between moments; through drawing, I pour hours of nonsense into sketchbooks and sift for those little gold nuggets that ring true.

To expand on that, I’m gonna go back a little bit. I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and although I’m very grateful to the rugged and hands-on nature of my childhood, as an artist I felt stifled, limited to only worshipping nature, the way most artists there are called to do. However, I was more interested in the internal, Alaska was less interested. Moving to New York for school, I went through a pretty intense metamorphosis of my story telling through art – whereas previously I saw myself more as a scientist creating elaborate puzzles to solve through images, I sloughed that skin and turned inward to self-portraiture.

I am interested in my own lived experience as something more collective, and shared with those around me. People often look at my images and say “hey, me too”.

Living in New York has greatly influenced my work, and is obvious given the imagery that surrounds these ladies that I paint.

Instead of creating these works in an act of control, I feel as though the process is an organic discovery; I use automatic drawing as a tool, where I fill print pads, legal paper, Xerox paper, and sketchbooks with unfiltered doodles. Often whatever I’m feeling will come out through the sketches – it’s important that there is zero-judgment in this phase. During this process, an image will find me, a little “aha!” I’ll then hone in on that, developing the sketch further.

Every painting has found me from this process, of distilling my life through doodles and refinement. Through curating my free-range thoughts, allowing the truth within them to take center stage.

All of my figures are unavoidably self portraits. They struggle and thrive through malaise, body image, human inconveniences, online distractions, and the weight and beauty of living within our flawed, capitalist world. Their bodies bend and contort, often rendered cartoonishly, but with love and reverence: their nudity ideally in conversation with the historical nude, but one without objectification. They live, they breathe, they fart, they fuck. They’re me.

You describe your sketching process as a kind of treasure hunt—letting your thoughts run wild until something honest or strange emerges. How do you know when you’ve struck gold? What does that moment feel like for you?”

It’s a little like chasing the rabbit. There is an initial “aha!”, and then the anticipation as a narrative starts to form like a cloud around the image. Maybe it starts with a domestic image, a woman pouring tea. As I’m drawing, the teacup begins to overflow, is she distracted?

What’s distracting her? I then “yes-and myself” into building a story— a single-frame image that is saying something, and all the questions I ask are answered through my own feelings or experiences. I then place objects as if I’m building a little set in a dollhouse.

I can tell when a scene feels like gold, when the narrative builds itself, and when the little pieces begin to amount to something a little unknowable, but still resonant. When it feels greater than the sum of its parts, then I want to paint it.

That sense of setting a stage or building a dollhouse is so vivid—do you think of your figures as performers in a scene, or more like extensions of your inner world being witnessed? Who are they ‘performing’ for, if anyone?

Though I’ve never quite thought about them this way, they are absolutely performers, little clay dolls that act out the script I’ve written for them, but the script is autobiographical. They are essentially hired actors for my diary.

I think this also reflects many of them not having faces. I don’t fully shy away from rendering faces, but I don’t wish for them to be a distraction. The scene reflects them more than their faces could. In one way, this allows me to distance myself from them in the traditional sense of self-portraiture, but also allows others to step into them themselves. I won’t pretend I fully understand the impulse, but it does allow the figures to act more as props, as much as the teapot or the countertop. I am more interested in the wholistic scene as the portrait over the individual portrayed, if that makes sense.

There’s a mischievous humor in your work, cheeky & self-aware. How do you approach that tone without it undercutting the emotional depth? Is it something you consciously balance, or does it emerge naturally?

Its definitely a balance that I don’t always nail, but hoping the reverence and love I give these paintings allows for any subject matter, regardless of cheek, to still carry sincerity. Because ultimately I care very much. Its easy to joke about things, to want to make light of everything that’s going on. Its always been my natural social impulse to share awkward or uncomfortable feelings through humor – But my desire to connect with people through shared experience is so deeply uncontrollably sincere.

All this talk of sincerity and I can feel myself embarrassed already.

Haha don’t be, It’s beautiful to connect through shared experience. Your figures are unmistakably yours—vulnerable, exaggerated, loving, and unashamed. In both form and subject, they feel like feminist acts.

How does your identity shape the way you depict the body, and what role does painting as a physical, historical medium—play in reclaiming or reimagining that visual language?

The female nude carries so much historical baggage, and with any iconography, you’re unavoidably in conversation with it, heavy bags and all.

For my day job, I work in art handling, and through handling thousands of artworks, both historical and contemporary, many of the works that come through my hands are nudes. Sculpture, painting, photography et al, I always ask myself the same question: did a man or woman (binarily speaking) create this. To date, I have never once been incorrect in my guessing.

Answer: definitely feminist.

It excites me to bring my own perspective to this conversation. Its funny to only just be previously talking about how I literally use my figures as props, as objects.

Yet simultaneously; I am pushing against historical objectification of women in art. Maybe its contradictory, but i think through sharing my honest experience of what it feels like to live in a female body, and not just look at one from the outside, is enough.

There’s reverence without perfection, sexualization without objectification, and beauty within their honest displays.

Looking ahead, are there ideas, forms, or projects you’re itching to explore? Whether that’s a shift in scale, medium, or even narrative focus? What feels urgent or exciting in your practice right now?

Oh boy, my thoughts are like a bag of bunnies dropped into the middle of a room, and they are bolting in every direction. But without getting too ahead of myself, I am currently seeing through a series of 40×60” (a size that fits conveniently in my elevator) oil paintings, without about 5 more to do. Outside of that I am constantly sketching and drawing, with eagerness to expand outside of my painting practice into 3D, glass, textiles etc. I want to get my hands on everything, but for now I am limited to what my apartment studio can provide.

Once I button up this series, I’m looking forward to clearing out my studio, covering the walls in paper, and letting loose.