Ray­mond Lem­stra is an artist that I can’t believe I haven’t writ­ten about before. When I saw his acrylic and col­ored pen­cil draw­ings, I fell in love with both the tech­nique and char­ac­ters. There is a nice jux­ta­po­si­tion of soft col­or­ing and han­dling of the media with the hard, almost mechan­i­cal nature of a lot of his draw­ings. Ray­mond is a great draftsman.

All images via his Flickr. Check out his web­site, too.

Hey ya’ll, finals have exhausted me and there is still more to do! I’m going to take a break today, but see you all on here tomorrow!

The gouache paint­ings by Naomi Wilkin­son are some of my favorite things I saw this past week­end. She por­trays scenes with peo­ple, some his­tor­i­cal, some based on fan­tasy, and oth­ers based on fairy tales. All of them have a bit of a chalky, in pen­e­trat­ing color that sub­tly shows of tex­ture and brush stroke.

Naomi has just fin­ished her new web­site, so be sure to check it out.

All images via her Tum­blr.

I’ve been fol­low­ing the work of Tyson Anthony Roberts for some time now, and since that time I’ve seen quite a shift in his paint­ings. Pre­vi­ously, his paint­ings were acrylic on can­vas, using highly con­trolled and tight mark mak­ing. I liked that! But, I also enjoy the direc­tion Tyson is headed now. There is some­thing won­der­ful about see­ing this growth of his land­scapes, which are mov­ing towards a looser line. It is less rep­re­sen­ta­tional and a more exper­i­men­tal. Besides acrylic paint, Tyson now utl­izies crayon and ink. From his web­site, his cur­rent artist statement:

Land­scape paint­ing pro­vides an array of envi­ron­ments and famil­iar imagery to work with as a start­ing point. From here, ele­ments of abstract expres­sion­ism, color-field paint­ing and spon­tane­ity are merged to form rural and urban scenes that appear to be in con­stant tran­si­tion, tak­ing the viewer from what was to what may be. It is through this idea of con­tin­ual move­ment by which my work sug­gests that the places we know are always chang­ing, whether we are ready or not.

If you are in the Seat­tle area, be sure to check out the solo exhi­bi­tion that Tyson has in May. His show, In the Midst of Tran­si­tion opens May 10 at the Ghost Gallery.

All images via his web­site.

Com­pared to his past work (love the spray paint):

I know I sound like a bro­ken record — finals finals finals! So, I apol­o­gize for this post­be­ing short, but I did want to show you the scraps I received from Pix­eliri­ous. It warms my heart to see peo­ple so enthu­si­as­tic about the Col­lage Scrap Exchange!

Pix­eliri­ous sent me some really beau­ti­ful things that will be hard to part with! Love the image of the hummingbirds.

If you have any com­pleted col­lages to send to me, please do! I am excited to see what ya’ll will come up with this round.

Yes­ter­day I received some inter­view ques­tions, one sec­tion being about col­lect­ing art. I love col­lect­ing art, although my cur­rent bud­get doesn’t always allow for every­thing I’d like. Regard­less, the inter­view got me think­ing about the art in my home, and what I cherish.

I have been a fan of Megan Whitmarsh’s work for years, and when I saw this print avail­able on Tiny Show­case I couldn’t buy it fast enough. I love that Megan hand-embroidered each print. It is one of the first things I see when I come home, and it makes me happy every time I see it. How pow­er­ful this art thing is.

Image via Tiny Show­case.

Megan’s work in 2011 has been a con­tin­u­a­tion of the way in which she’s worked over the past sev­eral years. The yeti that is present in the print above still makes cameo appearences every once and while (it was much more preva­lent mid-2000’s), but for the most part, Megan’s work really focuses on objects and with her totems, the wor­ship or glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of them.

All images via her web­site.

I finally bought a new (not super fancy, but new) DSLR cam­era, so now I can bop around not hav­ing to worry about procur­ing a cam­era some other way. (If any­one has any awe­some cam­era bag rec­om­men­da­tions, let me know.) The first place I took it was MICA to check out the third install­ment of the MFA The­sis Exhi­bi­tion, Off the Rails.

I’ve enjoyed the other exhi­bi­tions so far, but this was the only one that I got (par­tial) shots of. There is much more to see and expe­ri­ence, this is only a small offer­ing. BUT! You have time to see the show until it ends on the 29th (Sunday).

Sean Ben­nett


Ali Miller


Jen­nifer Coster



(that was a maze you’d walk through)

Zach Storm (he’ll be at sophi­a­ja­cob this com­ing week­end in their show, inau­gural)




Carly Wit­mer



Abe Gar­cia



(visu­al­iza­tion based on what the user did on their instruments/iPad)

Clara Kohn

I like Jonathan Boam’s work, and I watched Ghost­busters on Fri­day (Egon said print was dead way back in 1984), so I found this illus­tra­tion expe­cially entertaining:

Jonathan draws a lot of fan art. But, not fan art that you’d nor­mally expect — ear wax and stick man are a cou­ple. Over­all, his draw­ings are sim­ple with a min­i­mal use of color, but I per­son­ally appre­ci­ate a beau­ti­ful stroke of line so I enjoy look­ing at his illustrations.

All images via his Flickr.

Some water­color draw­ings:

Car­board Cities, a site of illus­tra­tion and art by Laura Red­burn fea­ture col­lage works. Many focus on dreamy, hazy scenes with her newest show­cas­ing women and nature. Sym­bol­ism is used quite a bit in her work, with the main sub­jects often feel­ing removed, dis­placed, or some­thing to conceal.

All images via her web­site.

Laura also did an ani­ma­tion fea­tur­ing some of her col­lages. Check it out below:

Unti­tled from card­board­c­i­ties on Vimeo.

I’ve been fol­low­ing the Tum­blr of Wish­candy (AKA Sashiko Yuen) for awhile now, and enjoy her col­or­ful por­traits with a hint of sin­is­ter. I always love the sub­ver­sive. She writes on her website:

My work is a double-edged sword. It’s bright, col­or­ful, and fun but it tack­les darker sub­jects. I enjoy explor­ing both the beau­ti­ful and the grotesque. They’re not mutu­ally exclusive.

I’m cur­rently cre­at­ing work based on the idea that food is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our lives. It’s lux­ury as well as fuel. What we eat reflects where we are in our lives. The things we eat when we’re sad, bored, cel­e­brat­ing… It’s def­i­nitely semi-autobiographical, pow­er­fully packed with metaphors and a sense of humor!

For Wishcandy’s work, I am really enjoy­ing the color palette, among other things. Prob­a­bly not inten­tional, I keep think­ing of Jem and the Holo­grams… maybe it’s the color? Either way it is adding another level for me — a tinge of nostalgia.

All images via her blog (Blog­ger).