"My characters are usually insecure and have anxiety about looking good or being fashionable," Amber Boardman told Juxtapoz back in 2017. "I'm especially interested in how people can distort their bodies to look better but end up looking grotesque. It's important to note that I'm not making fun of these characters. I have sympathy for their feelings of insufficiency, but I don't exactly share them. It's like holding up a mirror to normal behavior. When you really look at something commonplace, it starts to seem pretty strange."

We couldn't help but think of that idea when we saw the new works Boardman is presenting in Crowd Scenes, a new solo show opening from July 4th to July 27, 2019, at Chalk Horse Gallery in Sydney, Australia. The US-born, Australia-based painter looks at the ways large groups of people interact socially, either in independently-dense situations or collaborative settings. There's a rawness to the works, where Boardman is "looking at ever-changing social norms and crowd behavior." Scenes at a sporting event, a concert or, even, a gym give a sense of individuality and expression, but still, show how interconnected and collective the human experience really is. 

Boardman's Crowd Scenes is on view at Sydney's Chalk Horse Gallery from July 4—27, 2019.