Biography
Ezekiel Bliss is a printmaker primarily working in intaglio, relief, and lithography, earning a BFA in printmaking from Maine College of Art & Design in May 2026.
Inspired by artifacts of media culture ranging from old pin-up collections, cinematography and forced perspective, Bliss creates small series works that incorporate these concepts. The work encapsulates the strangeness of bodies and the inherent uneasiness when reality starts to become uncanny. Scenes that stand by themselves–the mundane, the slow and quiet things just out of reach. Bliss leaves the viewer with just a small bit of context to interpret.
Statement
I am a person who loves to collect and gather– if there are collectables of my niche interests, I will have them. Ranging from collecting memorabilia for my favorite movie, John Carpenter’s The Thing, to always consuming and seeking out trading cards or prints of pin-ups, I hold these things close. Keeping them around my working space, I constantly look to them for inspiration to inform my pieces. Utilizing the aesthetics to create works, I craft scenes of things I see so clearly in my head.
Imagery I’m also drawn to is that of the mundane, the slow and quiet things. The way bathrooms look, the way artificial street lights interact with tall office buildings, to the way sunlight lights a hiking trail– these in-between places spark my interest in the concept of liminality, and the horror that sometimes accompanies it. I strive to create places that can be passed off as real, but something is off– either in the setting itself, or the figures that occupy it.
Finally, I want to make works that give the impression that the viewer is looking into these worlds, either from a first person perspective, or through a keyhole. To be the camera, to be in the story.
