Portraiture Combining Natural Imagery And Negative Space

Ritchelly Oliveira is a Brazilian visual artist, predominantly working in the realm of portraiture. His images depict emotive studies of usually male figures, sometimes layered with natural imagery of flowers and birds. The characters are seen to both ignore and interact with the other components in the frame, and Oliveira creates playful areas of negative space that enhance the emotions perceivable in the drawings. Particularly in his portrait series ‘Lacunas’ (translating to ‘hiatus’ or ‘gap’), the pieces present an exploration of love and desire, offering a personal insight to the artist’s belief that “love can transform people in a way that is beautiful to capture.”

All images © Ritchelly Oliveira