Noah Ptolemy: People Eat People Too

“People Eat People Too” is a solo show of paintings by Berkeley based artist Noah Ptolemy. Applying deceptively simple illustration techniques with acrylic paint and india inks, Ptolemy creates complex and crisply rendered narrative images of the human theater, full of competition and play. Each painting is a layered tableaux, populated by a multitude of Ptolemy’s signature “everyman” characters bustling about a circus-like, anthropomorphized stage. In the artist’s words, “All the characters look the same so that everyone has an equal shot”.
Ptolemy spent his formative years living in Japan, and came to live in the US when he was 13 years old with minimal English skills. Ten years later, living in Detroit as a young adult in 2004, he started drawing and painting in earnest. “Set against Detroit’s crumbling neighborhoods and economy, my work quickly started incorporating elements of both isolation and hope. As someone who had a rough go with my identity when first arriving in the U.S., I felt like I could really relate to a city no one seemed to care about.” Fast forward another decade, and Ptolemy has developed a highly focused and unique storyline that runs through his work and translates his outsider’s perspective. The exhibition of “People Eat People Too” will include new works not previously exhibited by the artist.