Patterns are a vital part of human creativity. The ancient Maya peoples developed elaborate symbols representing the natural world and cosmos, while indigenous Polynesian cultures administer tattoos during important rites of passage. Intricate geometric patterns are an essential part of Islamic art and architecture, channeling the divine through sacred repetition.
More recently, in the 20th century, the Bauhaus movement explored the functional application of simple decorative patterns that could be manufactured in an industrial setting, while Op Art harnessed repeating patterns to explore our visual perception with optical illusions.
Below, we highlight contemporary artists building on thousands of years of tradition, harnessing patterns as far-flung as houndstooth, polka dots, animal print, ikat, tie-dye, florals, batik, and everything in between.
Brooklyn-based artist Jocelyn Hobbie’s dazzling figurative oil paintings feature women with striking angular features gazing out of the frame with looks of subtle boredom or malaise. Explosive, decadent layers of floral patterns envelop Hobbie’s subjects, in juxtaposition to their reserved expressions. The result captures a feeling familiar to many of us navigating an always-online world of distractions: a sense of growing disaffection with our overstimulated lives, yearning for higher purpose.
In ornate paintings featuring contrasting colors and archetypal characters, Los Angeles–based artist Amir H. Fallah interweaves personal histories and cultural myths to explore his Iranian American identity and the immigrant experience. With references as wide-ranging as children’s fables and cartoons, punk rock music, Persian miniature painting, Western art history, and psychedelics, Fallah’s “portraits” typically obscure the faces of his subjects, allowing viewers to project themselves into the paintings.
Megan Williamson paints delightfully cacophonous still lifes that collapse common objects like furniture, vases, and stationery into flat planes of Fauvist colors and repeating patterns. “Painting a still life is a very specific way of seeing,” the artist wrote about her current exhibition with Boom Contemporary. “I look closely at my subject with attention and hope. I want to respond to what is in front of me while also looking for what will be revealed.”
In his use of colorful mass-produced imitation batik textiles, as well as repurposed jute and cotton sacks once used to trade African commodities like cocoa beans, Ibrahim Mahama considers the intertwined histories of capital and labor in large-scale installations, performances, and domestic-scale works. In his “Fabric Paintings” series, Mahama reflects on the commodification of African identity, stitching together tableaus of Dutch wax cloth—inspired by African textile design, yet imported from industrial factories in China and Europe. The final assemblages are destined to enter the global art market and command prices that far exceed the value of the materials used to create them—a further twist commenting on capitalist structures and the collective beliefs that hold them in place.
Using a hand-drawn grid as her point of departure in lively repetition-based paintings, Swiss artist Athene Galiciadis subtly varies her geometric patterns to reveal figurative elements like people, animals, and plants. The artist considers her acrylic-painted vases to be an extension of her painting practice: Unlike traditional glazed ceramics, which require two firings, Galiciadis paints her previously fired vessels and then allows them to air dry, like a canvas painting.
The fabric-shrouded subjects in Yemeni Bosnian American artist Alia Ali’s photographs are camouflaged against intricately upholstered backdrops, often creating a stunning trompe l’oeil effect while reflecting on global histories of colonialism, migration, and war. Each work begins with extensive research into the history, distribution, and production of the particular fabrics Ali employs, from indigo-dyed cloth to ikat and batik textiles. The final images are mounted in custom-made frames that Ali—who was included in The Artsy Vanguard 2021—upholsters herself, usually in the same fabrics as those depicted in the image.
In her home studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sarah Sullivan Sherrod weaves, sews, stretches, and paints vivacious pattern-based works that capture the spirit of serendipity and puzzle-like playfulness. Each weaving begins on Sullivan Sherrod’s loom with defined color and size parameters, yet the artist improvises from there. “Each phase of creation is like a game itself,” she has said, “using the conversations between colors and shapes to complete the puzzle of the final work.”
A former literary translator, Adelaide Cioni creates understated works on paper that explore patterns and visual codes shared by cultures across the globe, many of which appear from antiquity to today. She has likened our most common patterns (circles, strikes, crosses) to a universal alphabet, activating something primal inside us, yet transcending any single meaning. “If you think about the decorations on ceramics found in prehistoric archaeological digs,” the artist once told Studio International, “we were dressed in skins with nothing to our name, but we were drawing these grids, dots, and triangles.”
Yale MFA graduate Tunji Adeniyi-Jones is known for sensual paintings and prints that feature brightly hued patterns of swirling bodies, flora, and fauna that draw from his Yoruba heritage and diasporic experiences. Adeniyi-Jones’s recent installation as part of the Nigerian pavilion in the 2024 Venice Biennale drew widespread acclaim: The artist mounted a massive, orange-hued canvas painting on the ceiling of a historic Venetian palazzo, referencing Italian fresco tradition.
