“Born and raised in New Jersey, Aaron Carree has always turned to art as his truest form of expression.” That passion eventually led me to earn my BFA in Studio Art from Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina. Alongside art, sports have always been a central part of my life, shaping the way he sees movement, energy, and form. His fascination with how the body and muscles contract, shift, and flow in motion deeply influences my work. Aaron works at the intersection of drawing and painting, beginning each piece with oil pastel and building the surface through a slow, painterly layering process. My tools, ink pen, charcoal (powder and pencil), HB pencil, and mixed media on Stonehenge or Strathmore paper, allow me to move between precision and expressive depth. He also incorporates an X-Acto knife, scissors, and acid-free adhesive glue spray for cutting, shaping, and assembling materials within my mixed media work. Aaron Carree starts with a neutralized, dead-color foundation and gradually layer marks from a limited palette that can extend from muted tones to carefully placed moments of pure color.

His work exists between realism and expressionism, grounded in a Black urban style of visual language and informed by the dynamic movement of sports. The human figure is rendered with realistic structure yet guided by expressive, tactile mark-making and technical variations of color and value. Lines, contours, flowing shapes, and forms work together to create rhythm, movement, and energy, while layered color emphasizes the physicality and dynamic muscle movements of the body. This interplay of rhythm, line, shape, form, flow, and color expresses both emotion and physical intensity.

From a distance, the image reads as quiet realism; up close, it resolves into assertive layers, visible strokes, evolving textures, and expressive gestures that reveal the process of making. Aaron Carree drawn to the tension of work that is both accurately represented and emotionally charged, both controlled and raw. Being involved in sports, my artwork style is a balance between gracefulness and grit, reinforcing the dynamic energy, disciplined execution, and urban sensibility in each piece.