The People in Alli Conrad’s Paintings Often Don’t Have Faces, but Her Work Conveys a Rich Sense of Intimacy Through the Intricacies of Detail

These are the cropped, tightly focused paintings of LA-based artist Alli Conrad. “I don’t typically paint faces.” A moment later, she chuckles: “In the art world there’s an inside joke that artists who don’t paint faces don’t know how to.”

But the 29-year-old maintains that for her, eschewing faces is a conscious choice. “I think there’s just so much more intimacy focusing on subtleties, such as how your fabric folds; and the pleats—how you’re crossing your arms or bending your fingers,” she says. “I think there’s so much expression and emotion within just the body language.”

Alli believes that this form of cropping, with compositions often focused only on the torso, also allows the viewer to interact with the work in a more intimate way. “I want the viewer to create their own narrative,” she explains. “I think when you have a face involved, you can’t really imagine too much.”

Alli says she is currently obsessed with mastering intricate details. For example, she will spend hours painting a series focused on drapery. “People are always shocked to hear that painting is very labor-intensive,” she says. “I have a fitness tracker, and it tells me how many calories I’ve burned, and I actually burn a lot of calories just from painting!”

For inspiration, she looks to older contemporary female artists including Poppy Jones, Julie Curtiss and Louise Bonnet. Her subjects are often strangers, inspired by reference photos she finds from hours spent scouring the internet. “A lot of them are very vintage references from the past—black and white film photos or very random photos that I find,” she says. “It’s an art selecting these photos to paint, and then I modify them so that it’s not a complete replica.”

Indeed, Alli’s art hearkens back to a simpler time, a romantic and vibrant remembrance of things past. “I’m a bit of a nostalgia queen,” she jokes.

These nostalgic works of art, like torn pieces of snapshots from a family album, have earned acclaim for the artist. Her work has been shown at galleries worldwide, including here in LA at Steve Turner Gallery, Richard Heller Gallery and Sow & Tailor. She has also been featured in Women’s Wear Daily Los Angeles and Juxtapoz magazines.

Growing up as a Chinese American, Alli’s world was large. She moved around the globe as a “third-culture kid,” with her family constantly uprooting to accommodate her father’s supply chain job. “I was born in North Carolina and then moved to Houston, then Singapore, next Hong Kong, back to Houston and finally Los Angeles,” she says. One gets that sense that living in so many places is how Alli learned to focus closely on the intricacies of life that connect us all—the micro instead of the macro.

When it comes to marketing her art, though, she is macro. Alli has always had a keen interest in business, and thinks that in another life she would have been creative director or CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She has taken an active role in promoting her work, making a name for herself mostly through social media. Word of mouth has also helped. Still, regarding her rising star in the art world, she admits she’s somewhat surprised. Her career started out somewhat haphazardly.

She loved to draw while growing up, and decided to take up painting as a hobby 8 years ago “purely for fun.” She did not take any classes, and instead relied on YouTube videos, articles and advice from other artists. “But really most of my learning came through practice and exploration. Then it turned into something. I decided to take a bit of a risk and fully commit to being an artist. And now I’m here.”