Hunter Harvey’s “text paintings” are graphic parodies where the typeface is the main character

How do you pronounce ‘wilshire’? Los Angeles-based artist Hunter Harvey tells you exactly how – by writing it. Hunter’s “text paintings”, made with flashe paint (a hyper-saturated vinyl-based paint that dries to a velvety matte finish), airbrush and masking techniques, are a sharp break away from his naughty figurative work over the years, think of bears with voluptuous breasts – actually don’t! Hunter came to realise he had painted himself into a corner through paintings of characters from The Flintstones having sex and mega-colourful remixes of Smokey The Bear. What is infinitely flexible, however, is text. Hunter’s newer paintings carry the same wink-wink humour as his previous works, but now his craftsmanship is even more impressive, through faithfully recreating old Microsoft slideshow fonts and kitschy digital gradients, the famous “you wouldn’t download a car” anti-piracy meme-font and the amusing vulgarity of bumper stickers.

“I pull text from anywhere: signage while driving, overheard conversations on LA streets, drunk people at parties, TV. I’m always waiting for the right words – short, unresolved phrases that leave the door ajar,” says Hunter. “I can make paintings that might appear to be jokes or very serious statements, though it’s not always clear which ones are which – and that’s the point.” Living in LA drives this interest in language, where billboards and signage define the landscape – it’s what helps Hunter’s paintings appear deceptively simple; these graphics hold cultural ideas, inner thoughts, hidden sentiments. Through mini-investigations into typefaces, Hunter deconstructs ideas about classic fonts like Helvetica, which is one he calls “trusted” and “authoritative” because it appears on our screens often. “At the other end is Impact, the classic meme font. It’s bold, unapologetic and harder to take seriously,” says Hunter. Simply, Hunter summarises: “The typeface becomes part of the message.”