Truman Capone

That's part of what makes MUTT — his first public exhibition — feel less like a debut and more like an arrival. The five paintings in the show depict invented creatures that belong to no known species and no existing myth. They're not hybrids in the classical sense — nothing here is a man plus a horse, or a woman plus a fish. They're something else: odd, imperfect, a little unsettling, and unmistakably alive.

Capone's work draws on Pop Surrealism, the California-rooted movement that joined fine-art painting with the visual language of illustration and popular culture — and on a long-standing personal fascination with toys, plastic surfaces, animals and natural forms. Every creature in MUTT is painted with the same instinct: find the thing that looks almost familiar, then let it become entirely its own.

In his own words:

"I've always identified more with a mutt than a purebred. I'm a little bit of everything, and that's how I like my world too. The creatures in MUTT don't really belong to any one place or category. They're odd, imperfect, sometimes beautiful and sometimes a little unsettling, but each one has something about it worth loving. I think there's something very human in that."

MUTT was created exclusively for Emerald Thinker and opens October 10, 2026 at Cruise Coffee Cafe in Scotts Valley, California.