GINA MINICHINO: Playing with Food

Gina Minichino started her journey in visual arts because of Charles Schulz. "He was my earliest influence for drawing and the reason I wanted to be a cartoonist," she says.

-  Erin E. Rand

After spending her early career doing caricatures at parties, she eventually went back to school to study painting.

"Once I started, I wanted to see how realistic I could make stuff," she says. At first, she was primarily painting human subjects, but after discovering the work of Wayne Thiebaud, she became fascinated with food.

In Minichino's upcoming show at Billis Williams Gallery in Los Angeles, her subjects are all edible. "I think my cartooning can come into play in a subconscious way with my paintings," she says. "All of the pieces in this show are food that has been dumped over or spilled in some way and in a way I think that has a cartoonish kind of narrative."