For American painter Spencer Sweeney, the artistic process is less of a linear path and more of an improvised musical composition, filled with subconscious rhythm and unpredictable bursts of colour.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that the 52-year-old grew up in a family of musicians and artists, and works as a painter and a DJ in New York, his home since graduating from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1997.

At his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Sweeney explains to the Post that his art practice goes beyond the portraits seen in the gallery – it is an immersive and multisensory process related to his other creative outlets, such as the “noise art” group he set up in 1997 with fellow musician-artist Lizzi Bougatsos and the legendary nightclub Santos Party House (2008-2016) that he co-founded in Manhattan.

“I am always thinking about how one invents their own ways of depicting and representing things,” he says.