b. 1995, Missouri, USA

Sage Barnes is a contemporary American painter now based out of Kansas City. His self-taught urban style lands somewhere between pop art, street art, abstraction, and figuration. The bold colours and rich textures of his canvases are a testament to the confidence with which he explores use of different mediums. Acrylic, oil pastel, and spray paint intermingle in his gestural markings and layering of form with abstraction. Barnes briefly attended the Fashion Institute in LA before deciding to pursue his arts practice full-time. He felt the institutional confines too constricting on his self-expression. He takes a satirical approach to his exploration of themes of self-identity, self-expression, and individualism.