Troy Lovegates, widely known as "OTHER", is an artist currently based in Oakland, CA. His works are heavily patterned and saturated with hyper color. With a knack for the use of found materials and the unification of wildly disparate elements, both material and aesthetic, Lovegates uses everything from spray paint, oil stick, water color, acrylic, and ink to create works on canvas and paper as well as wooden sculptures.
A self-described "collector of lost souls,” the artist focuses on the figure as story, building motifs through heavily condensed mark making. The figures in his work are sympathetically drawn from equal parts caricature and realistic observation. Lovegates is constantly revising and adapting previous efforts, reintegrating them into current bodies of work that reflect the history of their making. His hand-carved wooden pieces bring his paintings to life as objects. The powerfully weathered people in his imagery are often real, captured through photographs and observation taken while on his travels over the years. Motivated by his own dreams and nightmares, Troy Lovegates works are emotive arrests of an awe-inspiring imagination.