Chicago Illustrator Clay Hickson’s “Anti-Style”

There’s a distinctive quality to Chicago illustrator Clay Hickson's work that I couldn’t quite put my finger on — that is, until he told me his dad had been an airbrush illustrator in the ’70s and ’80s, filling Clay's childhood with the kind of sumptuous close-ups that turn product illustration into fetish. That cheekiness, bold composition, and surreal eroticism all resonate in Hickson’s work, but here they’re reinterpreted through digital media.