Posts Tagged ‘painting’

santiago salvador

Friday, August 27th, 2010

San­ti­ago Salvador has cre­ated some paint­ings that I really enjoy!

His paint­ings have all the ingre­di­ents, but aren’t mixed together. Things exist beside each other, but don’t nec­es­sar­ily inter­act the way you’d expect them to. It chal­lenges the amount of depth that each piece has, despite the moun­tains that are present in many of his paint­ings.

Look­ing at Santiago’s paint­ings, I get the feel­ing that every­thing mat­ters, and noth­ing at the same time. Aside from the land­scape, the fig­ures and objects dot his paint­ings and feel small. At the same time, their lack of space and depth puts every­thing on the visual hierarchy.


All images via his Flickr.

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bárbara malagoli martino

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Both humor­ous and mor­bid, Bár­bara Malagoli Mar­tino illus­trates girls and women, in a sort of cross between Japan­ese Hara­juku and a Lolita.

I like the spin that’s put on Bárbara’s illus­tra­tions. They depict exu­ber­ance and super­flu­ous­ness, using pas­tels and col­ors so sweet that it’s sac­cha­rine. Out­fit­ted with lace-up boots, cups of tea and pal­ing around with uni­corns, there is, at the same time, a sense of dis­ap­point­ment or some­thing awry. Dis­mem­ber­ment, black tears, skulls — all of these things are also present amongst the sweet.


A lot of draw­ings that I like are done in a Mole­skin, to which I say “great job!” to Bár­bara. My sketch­books are never that com­posed. Her port­fo­lio also includes shoe design, street art, apparel and acces­sory design. These things are a bit more unas­sum­ing than her draw­ings and paint­ings, but still delight­ful nonethe­less. I love her painted shoes!

All images via her Flickr

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eric shaw

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Eric Shaw’s work puts me between eras. While it’s mod­ern, he tends to strad­dle the line between futur­ism and sur­re­al­ist move­ments. His draw­ings seem auto­matic and seem to come from the subconscious.

His shapes are exag­ger­ated arms and legs, and his paint­ings flesh-toned tow­ers. In the grand scheme of his work, there is a very struc­tured and at archi­tec­tural feel to it. Not only the del­i­cate lines give way to this, but the mon­u­men­tal­ism of his fig­ures as well. They tower in envi­ron­ments, unwa­ver­ing and not intimidated.

There is a sense of secu­rity that I draw from Eric’s work. Every­thing seems very con­tained; shad­ing does not ven­ture out­side the realm of its intended shape, and the col­ors are even and strong, despite the chaotic nature of its content.

All images via his Flickr.

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molly briggs

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Usu­ally plain ole’ land­scapes can be a turn off for me. There’s noth­ing to draw me in, no ten­sion to be felt. The work of Molly Briggs, how­ever, does quite the oppo­site. Molly’s works on paper include the series, Clear­ing, which are multi-layered, ethe­real paint­ings using acrylic, ink, and tem­pera paint.

There is a cer­tain amount of free­dom that Molly gives to the mate­ri­als she works with. She seems to let the ink flow freely once put on the paper, and doesn’t have a prob­lem let­ting things bleed. To con­trast this, she paints lines that both hide and exist on these forms. The “brush”, if you will. I espe­cially love when ele­ments are slightly trans­par­ent — you have to really look below just the surface.

Molly pairs col­ors beau­ti­fully; I love the sub­dued, nat­ural tone with the vibrant, almost elec­tric coral. It could feel so unnat­ural for the sub­ject of the work, but it’s a dra­matic and beau­ti­ful choice.

All images via her web­site.

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brecht vanderbroucke

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Brecht Van­der­brouke often infuses his paint­ings with a slice of life. A slice of life, how­ever, that has gone awry, some­times trag­i­cally so.

It’s not always for the worse, but often what Brecht’s sub­jects are endur­ing is dis­com­fort– whether it be phys­i­cal or emo­tion. Some of Brecht’s paint­ings deal with gen­eral awk­ward­ness, like not say­ing the right thing (espe­cially on the inter­net! Oh the human­ity). Other times, he takes it over the top and paints for us grue­some scenes with mutants, spir­its, and faulty machin­ery. Paired with his color choices and media, Brecht’s work is a bit dark, and com­ments on the idea of nos­tal­gia and social norms, ref­er­enc­ing to us things familiar.

All images via his Flickr.

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seth adelsberger

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Seth Adelsberger’s work sprouts from the idea of draw­ings, as well as the early impact that video games had on him, in addi­tion to cartoon/anime char­ac­ters. He orga­nizes his work not only for­mally, but his method is derived from this visual sat­u­ra­tion of his for­ma­tive years.

Seth’s artist state­ment gives some nice insight to his work. Below is my favorite excerpt:

My work has always strongly ref­er­enced land­scape. Although very lit­eral in my for­ma­tive years, this idea has become more about psy­cho­log­i­cal places or mind­scapes. Heads and eyes inhabit these invented worlds as self ref­er­en­tial sym­bols of view­ing and observ­ing, echo­ing roles of audi­ence and artist. I also enjoy toy­ing with recog­ni­tion in abstrac­tion and the sen­sa­tions caused by vibrat­ing col­ors. Dec­o­ra­tion and for­mal­ism are used to sub­vert tones of melan­choly, para­noia, and men­ace. My com­po­si­tions reflect the biprod­ucts of mate­r­ial accu­mu­la­tion and the inescapable real­ity of visual saturation.

I find it really inter­est­ing that Seth is essen­tially con­vey­ing land­scapes based upon the pro­gres­sion and cur­rent soci­ety, espe­cially in regards to over stim­u­la­tion. The col­ors, shapes, and lay­er­ing really speak to a mind that has so much run­ning through it. I’ve recently learned how trou­ble­some multi-tasking is, so it’s a bit sad to think that all of what Seth has painted is actu­ally run­ning through our heads.

All images via his web­site.

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time travel tuesday: alice neel

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Alice Neel was an Amer­i­can painter whose long career spanned from the Great Depres­sion to post World War II and into the 1960’s. Her paint­ings are noted for their expres­sion­is­tic use of line and color, and por­traits both psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tional, cap­tur­ing what was impact­ing her and the world at the time.

Neel grew up in Penn­syl­va­nia, first work­ing in a high-paying cler­i­cal posi­tion the sup­port her fam­ily, and later attend­ing the Philadel­phia School of Design for Women. Upon fin­ish­ing school, Neel endured some per­sonal dif­fi­cul­ties; she wed soon after grad­u­a­tion and was preg­nant with her first child, whom died before their first birth­day. After hav­ing a sec­ond child, her hus­band left with child in tow. After­ward, Neel suf­fered a break­down and attempted suicide.

Forced back home with her par­ents after an extended hos­pi­tal stay, she com­posed her world of artists, intel­lec­tu­als, and polit­i­cal lead­ers of the Com­mu­nist Party, all of whom became sub­jects for her paint­ings. Her work glo­ri­fied sub­ver­sion and sex­u­al­ity, depict­ing scenes lovers and nudes. She sym­pa­thized with the Com­mu­nist Party, con­tribut­ing illus­tra­tions to their pub­li­ca­tions. In the 1960’s, she became an icon for Fem­i­nists and the Women’s Move­ment, her work gar­ner­ing more attention.

I have long been a fan of Alice Neel. Her work uses an abstrac­tion of facial fea­tures, slightly dis­tort­ing them and the ges­ture of the fig­ures. This, paired with her sense of color gives it a somber feel­ing indica­tive of the cul­ture sur­round­ing the Depres­sion, post­war, and Cold War era.

All images via the Museum of Fine Arts, Hous­ton.

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allison schulnik

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Alli­son Schul­nik is an artist liv­ing and work­ing in Los Ange­les. Orig­i­nally receiv­ing a degree in Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion from Cal Arts, Alli­son uses her really unique style in dif­fer­ent art forms.

I think the most strik­ing thing about Allison’s work is its sculp­tural forms. She uses paint to build up a sur­face that gives us not only some­thing to look at from a two dimen­sional stand­point, but to also look at it crit­i­cally from a three dimen­sional point of view. The amount of details Alli­son has between the moun­tains and val­leys of her oil paint­ings is stag­ger­ing. You can spend a long time with each work and still dis­cover new things to each piece.

The every­man seems to be a com­mon theme in Allison’s work, but not in the sense we’re all used to. A lot of her draw­ings and paint­ings are of hobos and face­less men — obvi­ously down on their luck and blend with the back­ground or land­scape. You don’t nec­es­sar­ily notice them unless you chose to acknowl­edge them.

All images via her web­site.


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andy kehoe

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Well, if you must know, Andy Kehoe was thrown over­board after pirates raided the ship his sea mer­chant father worked on. He washed up on the Gala­pa­gos Islands and was raised by iguanas…

Andy has a rather lengthy biog­ra­phy ded­i­cated to his strug­gle to lead a more con­ven­tional life, and it’s that sort of imag­i­na­tion that reflects in his work. He has cre­ated work that has a rather omi­nous tone to it and whose col­or­ing gives the work a very heavy feel­ing. I love how antiqued the work looks, although the metic­u­lous detail is strik­ingly modern.

His crea­tures are old and wise. I can imag­ine them traips­ing through the world slowly, pre­sid­ing over the for­est as elders.

Andy’s work was recently fea­tured on Tiny Show­case. All images via his Flickr.

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matt leines

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Thurs­day Round Up will return next week! Sorry, guys!

If you’ve been read­ing this blog long enough, you’ve prob­a­bly come to real­ize my affin­ity for nar­ra­tives and sto­ries. Matt Leines is an artist who has cre­ated a world he nar­rates to us, the out­siders, from an insider’s point of view.


Matt depicts a cul­ture full of burly, mus­tached men and beasts alike. They take voy­ages on the sea and nav­i­gate through a world full of faces. There is a per­son­al­ity to every­thing, and the unblink­ing, full-pupil eyes give the work a feel­ing of rest­less­ness. The bouts of vio­lence sprin­kled in Matt’s work seems like it sprouts from the defen­sive that all of these char­ac­ters have assumed.

Visu­ally very flat, the amount of detail in each beard, arti­cle of cloth­ing, and on every head is meticulous.

Matt’s web­site was under con­struc­tion when I vis­ited it, so all images via Art Slant.

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