HANDS OFF MY LOCKS

Hands Off My Locks Miles Regis Fabric and acrylic on wood 39 x 19 inches 2024 About Miles Regis: In the life and studio of LA-based, Trinidad-born artist Miles Regis, every action is an opportunity for creative self-expression. Prolific in both fine art art and fashion design, Regis freely swaps the materials and languages of each to enrich the other. His large-scale mixed media paintings on canvas and linen incorporate dimensional collage elements of denim, buttons, leather, printed matter, sequins, and patches of eclectically sourced found textiles along with his dextrous, gestural, richly hued abstract and figurative painting techniques. Aggressively hopeful and humanistic, Regis embraces a storytelling stance in his stylized renditions of fundamental scenes of love, loss, freedom, survival, activism, and living history. Tapping into the emotional experiences of exotic cultures around the world and presenting them in ways that are relevant to today’s modernized societies, Regis favors the simplicity of black and white structure, starkly juxtaposed with the complex dimensions of color; recurring motifs include his use of eyes, encouraging the viewer to look deeper. His paintings are often layered with vibrant hues, powerful imagery, text, abstract brush strokes, and purposeful objects -- the same eye-catching iconography and palette which also appear in his original wearable art series. Hand-painted by the artist, each fabric highlights a delicately detailed working of both surface and narrative, in the same process that expresses the personal and collective mythologies enshrined in his art works.