August Quinn (b. 1999, New York City) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist whose work reflects a generation shaped by the early internet, underground culture, and hyper-stylized media. He studied painting at Central Saint Martins in London before earning a Bachelor of Media Arts in 3D Animation from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. His practice moves fluidly between painting and digital media, with 3D modeling and digital aesthetics playing an increasing role in his evolving approach.

Growing up immersed in fine art, street culture, and digital media, Quinn was deeply engaged with the visual identity of his generation, collecting vinyl figures and designer toys from the now-defunct Kidrobot store in SoHo and Toy Tokyo in the East Village, where graffiti, pop surrealism, and commercial design merged into collectible art objects. His understanding of color, form, and narrative have further been shaped by Japanese visual culture and game design, which continue to inform his work.

Quinn’s paintings channel the raw energy of 1980s East Village painters, the gestural force of 1950s Abstract Expressionists, and the hyper-stylized aesthetics of 1990s/2000s video games, animation, and digital pop. His paintings are layered, kinetic, and deliberately unpredictable—balancing instinctive mark-making with highly considered compositions.

Drawing from both underground and mainstream influences, Quinn’s work exists at the intersection of personal memory and collective pop history, where childhood imagery collides with the anxieties of contemporary life. In this digital era, Quinn questions what it means to create without a traditional art community—where identity, connection, and artistic presence are shaped as much by the internet as by the real world. This constant engagement with digital space fuels a tension between excess and detachment, which his paintings confront by grounding hyperstimulation in images and objects that are intimately human yet unmistakably of their time.

Text by Sarah Hochman