The horrors that lie beneath

Ask any artist and he will tell you that each of his works has a meaning or a story. The same can be said of artist Blake Neubert, but the messages his paintings carry are decidedly more sinister.

Neubert largely paints portraits, of celebrities and of unknown people. He loves painting people, though underneath each the facade of each painting lies unnerving horrors. Neubert’s latest series of paintings have a hidden message literally buried. On the face of it, the painting may be a portrait of Walt Disney, or Marilyn Monroe, but it really starts to get eerie once he takes a blade to his work. 

As Neubert strategically scratches off pieces of his painting, it reveals another one underneath, wild-eyed, bared teeth and with exposed flesh. The theme is something he calls Horror Realism, which let’s Neubert tell two stories with one picture — a calm, normal exterior, and the unflinching, grotesque madness that lies beneath. The artwork has been garnering Neubert a considerable amount of attention recently, with Instagram videos of him ‘revealing’ the hidden picture gaining him tens of thousands of views.