Painter Kwon Kyung Yup first starts with a photograph and then works from a draft before finally finishing her oil paintings. The strength of her realistic portraits comes from the addition of symbolic elements communicating an experienced trauma and vulnerability in her subjects.
I saw some of San Francisco based artist Jesse Balmer’s work in the recent issue of Juxtapoz and was reminded how much I like his personal brand of pop-psychedelia. There is some new work in his Flickrfolio to check out. It’s just a shame it isn’t posted at a little larger of a scale to show some of the detail of his imagery.
I was quite taken by the dense, sometimes morbid and extremely detailed work by artist and illustrator Caitlin Hackettart. You can view her work at Carbonmade and Society 6. You can get a better insight into her work through her artist statement.
Artist statement:
“In my work I am exploring the relationship between humans and animals; the idea of the human denial of our animal nature and of humans as the dominant species, as well as the mutation of the animal created by the human interpretation of the animal. My work alludes to the boundaries that separate humanity from animals both physically and metaphysically, as well as the objectification of and personification of animals. I invent creatures, anthropomorphic, mutated, or pseudo mythical in imagery, using my imaginary world and bringing it into the physical world in an attempt to create a language that speaks about the human animal relationship and the natural and unnatural elements of it.
I am faced with the fact that we live in a planet in decline, where almost every natural ecosystem in the world is slipping away. Human kind has created a planet of refugees; animals forced to flee ever farther from the insatiable encroachment of urban development, victims of a war for space which they cannot hope to win. My drawings refer to this decline and to the refugees it has created. I am left with the question of what is natural; are we (human beings) still a part of nature? If so, does that make all that we have created, cities, vehicles, factories, all technology, part of nature as well?
As we move into an increasingly plastic, electronic, and robotic culture how can we define our own fundamental nature as the nature of the world around us changes and our metaphysical identity evolves into something beyond the human as an animal? As we separate from our animal nature, will we be able to still see and understand the importance of other animals and our relationship to them? As we are able to remove ourselves from our own physical bodies and to come to experience life through the metaphysical, the digital, and the psychic, how will this distance from our own bodies and the physical experience of the world affect our relationship with nature and the way we see creatures who exist completely within their physical bodies and are defined by their physical needs?
As my work evolves I am beginning to think more and more about the way in which people bestow identity and how, deprived of identity, animals are reduced to a kind of living taxidermy subject to human apathy and mutated by human ideals of beauty or monstrosity. I am telling a story about disappearance and the rapid and extravagant destruction of the human-animal, and how this loss of our animal nature is affecting the way human kind views the animal world. I am describing these questions through the use of paper and ink in the form of life sized anthropomorphic creatures, which are installation pieces. Done entirely in ballpoint pen, ink, watercolor and colored pencil, these massive creatures are a balance between the power and physical presence of the life sized and the intensity of the dense, delicate, and time consuming detail of the ballpoint pen and ink. By installing these animals cut out on the walls they are released into our world and become characters that must be addressed in terms of our physical space, and must be granted an identity.”
I am intrigued by the art work in the Flickr-folio of ‘Blood Today‘. The artist originally hails from Oakland, California but currently resides in Brooklyn.
The Creative Lives has released a nice interview with Beautiful Loser artist Barry McGee. It’s always good to get it from the horses mouth when seeking to understand the person behind highly influential and inspirational art.
California-born New York-based artist Suzanne Unrein is a big fan of Rubens but she is also fond of Poussin, Raphael, Correggio, and Bougereau. Although you can see the influence of old masters on her work, she has developed an old world meets new impressionistic kinetic style utilizing a subdued color palette where every stroke counts in capturing an almost subdued kind of violence.
“Combining influences from abstract expressionism, British landscape painting, Japanese woodcuts, and graphic street art, Ashcroft integrates varied visual styles to generate a crossover between space, object and environment.”
There is something almost ‘comic book’ about some of London based Phil Ashcroft’s work and although it is in a sense abstract expressionism there is a deliberate pop flair about it and I like that. Abstract comic pop-expressionism.
Los Angeles based Artist Marco Zamora is currently exhibiting at the Fecal Face Gallery and his urban observations in watercolor and ink look especially striking in the gallery setting. I’d love to see the work in person but until I can afford a ticket west I will settle for the larger images at the Fecal Face Dot Gallery website.
Painter Inka Essenhigh is based in New York. Essenhigh studied at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio (1991) and the School of Visual Arts in New York (1993). Her work has been widely exhibited and is a part of several distinguished public collections including the Albright Knox Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Tate Gallery and the Saatchi Gallery in London. She is currently represented by Gallery 303 in New York, and the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.
Painter Mark Ryden paints ‘Incarnation’ in this time-lapsed video. A painting that apparently sold at Art Basel for $800,000. Amazing. The painting will be exhibited at ‘The Gay Nineties Show’ opening on Thursday, April 29th, 2010. The show is open through June 5th at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York.
Painter Matt Mignanelli’s pop art painting confections have been peaking through the blogosphere subterfuge in the last few weeks. His subtly gradiating paintings of bricks (which I at first mistook at first for keys on a keyboard) seem to be popular. Mignanelli is currently based out of New York City but has exhibited far and wide. You can see his work at both his website and through his Flickr stream.
I stumbled across the Flickrfolio of Colorado artist Lucong today and was once again totally blown away by his work but also delighted in being treated to some extra-large examples of his beautiful paintings. He is a true talent and I need to make it to one of his shows. His work is absolutely stunning.
“Alexa Meade’s innovative use of paint on the three dimensional surfaces of found objects, live models, and architectural spaces has been incorporated into a series of installations that create a perceptual shift in how we experience and interpret spatial relationships.”
Alexa Meade is a 23-year-old artist based in Washington, DC. She graduated with a degree in Political Science from Vassar College in May of 2009. She spent several summers interning on Capitol Hill and in 2008 was a press staffer on the Obama Campaign.
Her painting techniques push the boundary of perception by compressing three dimensional subjects into two dimensional planes. Essentially, Meade wraps live subjects (people) and objects in paint reversing the normal approach of an artist painting from a source subject and instead painting directly onto the source subject.
I wanted to apologize for getting to this one late. I actually saw this a week back, had it logged in a document somewhere and just never got around to having the time to post it this week. Do check out Meade’s work as it is definitely a fascinating approach to the accepted approach to paint and canvas.
Painter Carly Waito hit the trend nail on the head with her recent oil on masonite series depicting different kinds of crystals. They have been popular in hip art subculture, most likely because their ties to psychedelic art and her timing in achieving this series could not have been better. They are also beautifully rendered with a trompe l’oeil blur effect that helps add a layer of tangible reality to the works. Although I admit to loving the paintings of crystals, the above painting of Bornite stood out to me for it’s complicated use of color. There is an amazing attention to detail in that painting that I appreciate. She explains some of the process behind her renderings at her blog which you can read here.
The remarkable talent that is James Jean has updated with a new website and filled his online store with some beautiful works of art. I am impressed by how much he has gone straight towards being a fine artist and deviated from just being an illustrator. Prepare to be inspired after sifting through his work. He is one of the best. This one is being filed under ‘art’.
Christopher Davison earned an MFA in Printmaking from the Tyler School of Art. His work is dark, intense and deals in religious symbology, specifically Christianity. It’s a dicey subject to toy with in this day and age.
Rob and Christian Clayton, the amazing Clayton Brothers who share a bit of a Denver, Colorado heritage have updated their website with some of their spectacular new paintings. They now reside in Pasadena, California (come home guys). Count me as a fan. Their use of color and just flat out imaginative subject matter is absolutely beautiful.
The work of 25-year-old German illustrator Valentin Fischer will no doubt remind you of the work of James Jean and Sam Weber but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it is still very well executed. Regardless of the influence, I am still a big fan of this style and with the amount of talent required to achieve it Fischer definitely has some potential to make some beautiful work.
