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Processing the Ideal: A series of paintings that challenges the “American Dream”

Nick Peña is a visual artist and Associate Professor of Art at Christian Brothers University, located in Memphis, Tennessee. At the heart of his work is a series of juxtapositions between past and present, representation and abstraction, the American Dream and our environment, and in the end, stability and instability.

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A stilted house with green and white siding floats above layered planes of sand and water, with blue Adirondack chairs casting long shadows in Nick Peña's painting exploring the American Dream

Processing the Ideal is a series of paintings that attempts to question the meaning of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our psyche and our environment.

The pursuit of happiness as a subject led Peña to focus on and examine perceived structures (i.e. religious and secular, scientific, natural, economic, familial) and how although the idea of these structures are presumed ‘fundamentally sound’, society constantly struggles to define and redefine what those structures look like in an increasingly fragmented society. Discover more at www.nickpena.net.

Via direct submission | All images courtesy of Nick Peña

A yellow house sits on a floating island of dark soil suspended above autumn leaves, with a forest and orange sky in the background, alongside a smaller floating landmass
Surreal landscape painting showing a house floating on fragmented earth above scattered objects, with a river, trees and industrial structure in the background
Layered illustration combining a tan modernist building, rocky mountains, blue geometric shapes, architectural sketches and abstract watercolour elements in shades of blue and pink
Abstract painting combining geometric forms with seascapes, featuring sailboats and architectural elements in shades of blue, grey and black overlapping against a horizon line
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