Portfolio Review: Yarrow Slaps Shares His Paintings of Rappers, Artists, and Cultural Icons

Yarrow Slaps depicts rappers, artists, and cultural icons in his impressive paintings.

May 22, 2014

Image via Complex Original

San Francisco-based visual and music artist Yarrow Slaps has depicted some of the most important faces in our culture's recent history. His skillfully detailed portraits include Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Spike Lee, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac, and Jay Z. The multi-talented artist's work is hard to miss. Whether it crops up on brick walls or is painted across canvases, Slaps' style is unmistakable.

Most recently, Yarrow Slaps curated a show in Sacramento, Calif. called "Champagne" at Verge Center for the Arts. The exhibition included artists whose work is born from a street art aesthetic, mixing high and low culture much like Slaps' own pieces. Additionally, Slaps is showing work at a group show at Think Tank Gallery in LA called "Chilled Air."

Outside of his visual art, Yarrow Slaps also makes music. He has an album dropping with Mishka in July called Dreams of a Sheep Herder, and his group, The Gettas, is releasing The Purple Tape Vol. 1 shortly after. If that weren't enough, Slaps also recently launched a clothing brand called SWIM.

Check out some of the busy artist's work in our Portfolio Review: Yarrow Slaps Shares His Paintings of Rappers, Artists, and Cultural Icons.

Summer of Love

"This is a painting of some hippies chilling in the summer of love. Love is the answer."

Ever Since

"Here's a detail of a few rappers I feel represent the culture."

Diddy Bird and LL Blue J

"I did this painting as a collaboration with Justin Hager."

The Court Series

"This depicts the fucked up 'justice' system in America."

Mural Project

"I did this mural project with Guerrero Gallery on Keith and Thomas Streets in San Francisco."

Power

"This works symbolizes a display of male dominance from law enforcement (a cop), to the people (Tupac), to white-collar business power (Madoff), to religious power (the pope)."

1990's

"This is a piece about how blacks used to do the paper bag test in the early 1900s to assimilate and get jobs in America. I depicted a few rappers (Dolla, French Montana, Nelly, Jay Z, and Gucci Mane), lined them up by their skin tone, and gave them paper bags to see if they could pass."

Do the Right Thing

"Here's a portrait of Spike Lee because he kills it. This piece was stolen, so if you see it out there in NY holla!"

Warhol and Basquiat

"I painted this because these artists' works are inspiring. As a person of color, I've found that the untrained eye will tend to compare a young black artist to Basquiat. Both Warhol and Basquiat raised the bar in so many ways."