Largely self-taught, Malcolm T. Liepke paints in a style that synthesizes the work of other artists—John Singer Sargent, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Diego Velázquez, and James McNeill Whistler, among others—to create portraits that are both visually familiar and wholly unique. Liepke favors portraits of ordinary women in glamorous contexts, producing voyeuristic nudes that are sexualized through a realistic lens rather than a pornographic one. Loose brushstrokes and dusty gray-green skin tones imbue his subjects with a fleshy sensuality, while simple gestures and expressions convey emotions. Liepke paints from photographs and works in a wet-on-wet technique, borrowed from artists like Sargent and Velázquez, in which layers of oil paint are built up without drying in between.

American, b. 1953, Minneapolis, Minnesota, based in New York, New York