Joe Sorren’s surreal oil paintings and illustrations depict stylized, cartoonish characters in dreamlike settings that evoke the “lowbrow” art or Pop Surrealism of 1970s Los Angeles. Working in a muted, but luminous, palette, Sorren paints with impressionistic brushstrokes that create soft textures. Recently, Sorren has drawn inspiration for his foreboding paintings based on the experience of living through Hurricane Sandy in New York City in 2012. “Since painting is a physical record of movement in time,” Sorren has said, “brushstrokes are not unlike the grooves on a vinyl record—capturing not just the color and shape of a stroke, but the timbre; the energy and emotion experienced at the time it was painted.”