John Copeland’s distorted and expressionistic paintings capture the dark and libidinous human drives concealed within the everyday. He works in an elaborately gestural style, leaving large drips all over the canvas and warping his figures so that they merge into the background. “I usually work from some reference; old photos, some scrap from an old magazine, some source...I’m always pushing things more toward abstraction and trying to play with that line where things break up.” The figures in Copeland’s images eat, drink, scrutinize themselves in the mirror, and float in abstract space amidst skulls and biomorphic forms.