Calligraphy As Grid

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It's always intriguing to find different artists who come to the same conclusions artistically. On the right we have Denise Lach and this example of her work is from Terres d'ecritures. Although almost everything about her is in French, you can still get the gist of her oeuvre by viewing her work.

They're both presenting the written wordy as a grid or a minimal pattern where the subject matter is not the meaning of the words, but of the visual pattern itself.

The above work is by Ruslan Naiden and the image is from Calligraphy MVK, which is a huge calligraphy site you'll want to explore. We're not talking wedding invitations here; this is contemporary calligraphy that will surprise you.

Well-lit, Spacious Studio

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Don't you just love this studio shot ? Ah yes, a well lit sanctuary where art is brought forth; how romantic. Actually it's just another "day job" that certain people take seriously and do very well at. And you gotta love the atmosphere !

Charles Arnoldi produces paintings that are at once entertaining and meditative. He's honed his oeuvre to an exact science of his particular forms and colors in all their variations. An interesting read is Interview 1 and Interview 2 at the William Turner Gallery where you'll find a short and sweet overview of his work. This image is from and he's also represented by Charlotte Jackson.

Here are Image Search results from Google, Clusty and Yahoo.

Sculptural Pointillism

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Masako Kamiya's work is quite amazing. There's something going on here; you can sense it. Her work draws you closer and then the mystery is revealed. She applies dots of paint on top of dots of paint until you have little half inch stalactite columns. Views from the side reveal the different colors she's employed. Unbelievably, except for the logo at her Web Site, there are no closeups or side views of any of her work to let you in on her little secret; but they're all still entertaining, none the less.

This is a wonderful concept, the stacking of the dots for a 3 dimensional effect; but most of her works come across quite well as minimal pointillism. The works are quiet and soothing. You'll find more of those kinds of works at Gallery NAGA. You'll also want to see her work at Mass. Cultural Council, where her works on paper are a little more playful.

With few exceptions, postmodern pointillism is a celebration of the dots of paint. The days of using this genre to portray realism are long gone.

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Image is from Gallery NAGA.

"Square Eve"

is the title of this, my latest painting.

Obviously this isn't the best photo, but I'm not quite done with it yet and rather than wait till after it's finished with a nice coat of matte varnish, I thought I'd show it off now. This painting is constantly changing, depending on the angle and the light. So amazing how the colors shift and juxtapose. My biggest entertainment is seeing the copper (dot) patterns over the large heart shape that fills the canvas and how those interact with the other colors and shapes.

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The procedure for making this is to lay down a sheet of newsprint on canvas using gesso. Second step is to make a painting, using Conti Pencils and acrylic paint. To the right is this "under painting". And then comes the main event, which is the "controlled experiment" of the placement of the colored dots. It's an arbitrary process that varies with each painting. At times I'm working to disguise and at other times, to enhance, what will soon be obliterated by many dots of paint. What's kind of cool is the joke that no one will ever see; the two men talking at the bottom. The man on the right is Adam and on the left is his neighbor. They're fixing to go hunting. The neighbor has heard about Eve eating the apple and asks Adam, "Did you eat it ?". To this Adam replies, "No, I let her hang by herself ". Of course this all becomes nonexistent when the painting's finished; it's just something to do to provide color and lines to hang the dots on. I've a few more dots to add on the side and then it will be finished.

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One Hit Wonder

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There is so much about this video that makes it a simple and magical work of art. And it's really a shame that Amy Winehouse didn't fully grasp what she was doing here; that she didn't take care of her uniqueness and keep it honest and craft it into greatness.
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I can't tell you how many times I've watched this video and enjoyed the timing of the shots and everything else that makes it flow.
For me, none of her other work even comes close to this one performance.
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More Changes ?

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You may be wondering what in the world I'm doing and why.

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If you do a Google Image search for Catherine Courtenaye (for example), you'll find that Google returns about 5 to 7 solid pages of images from my blog that have nothing to do with her, (starting half way down on page 2). That's not right nor is it fair to the searcher. All I can figure is, it might be because all the artist's names were in the left column, which is what the search spiders see first. Maybe if I move the artists to the far right it will solve the problem. We'll see . . . .

Snowflakes

It won't be long now, until spring is here and the snow is just a memory. Thought you might like to see snow, close up. It's really quite fantastic.


The image is from a nice spread about snowflakes at Crooked Brains.

And Here's more snowflakes.
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Artistic Echoes

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A friend of mine thinks that artistic ideas and solutions are floating in the air like an unseen communal stream of consciousness that artists sometimes tap into. It was part of a broader conversation about how disparate artists in different times and places seem to come to the same creative conclusions.

This might not be the best example for that train of thought, but in searching for an image and artist to follow my previous post (somewhat like hanging an exhibit), I came across this painting that seemed very similar in certain ways, to the work by Lynne Drexler in the post below.

This painting is by Marius Martinussen, from his Website.
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Intermediary Pointillism

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As you read about Lynne Drexler you come to have a great respect for her and her work. Born in 1928 and having schooled under Hans Hoffman and Robert Motherwell, she found her own way and stuck with it. Her way was to break down the picture plane into smaller areas of color with brush strokes of all sizes and even dots. This was definitely a new take on pointillism, where the realism was starting to matter less and the appreciation for the individual pieces of the painting took center stage. The word pointillism is never mentioned when describing her work and she doesn't seem to have considered herself to be involved with the genre, but this certainly is a fore runner to the postmodern pointillism of today. You'll especially want to see her work in the Collection at the Portland Museum of Art.

Always interested in nature and landscapes, she later incorporated stylized organic forms into her work, as in the painting above. These have a wonderful harmony to them and just seem to make sense.

The top image is from the Portland Press Herald, which has more images and a nice article about her. Another good read (short) with images is the Jameson Art Group.

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This image, "Jomo's World" 1966 Oil on canvas, 22" x 22", is from the Anita Shapolsky Gallery.

She's also represented by the Thomas McCormick Gallery

and the Maine Art Collectors.

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Fun With Scribbles

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When does scribbling cross the line into graffiti ? If you take just a moment, the original meaning for graffiti will come to you. And just what is doodling ? I'm hard pressed to describe the work of Jeff Asan. He doesn't fit neatly into any of my categories, but he certainly qualifies to be seen here.

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His Website has lots of images for you to browse and you can come to your own conclusions. Although his Statement is sparse and basically says he's having fun, it does give a touch of insight into his oeuvre. Hopefully he'll grace us with more information in the future.
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The image is from re-title.
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Jeff Mueller

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Jeff Mueller's work deals with language. Most often it's readable even when scrambled (knowing the title helps). What precious few examples you can find of his oeuvre fall into two distinct categories. Either he presents us with readable text that's juxtaposed with fascinating images that make the pieces quite thought provoking; you'll find examples of those at the Peter Miller Gallery. Or he's playing around with the words themselves, sometimes turning them into a verbal soup. Those images can be found at the William Campbell Gallery.

I much prefer this latter style, of which these two examples are quite satisfying. His work also strikes a chord with me because on the one hand he lightly touches on the freedom of speech thing by appropriating phrases from public restrooms. And yet in some paintings, he's presenting that to us not as a narrative but as an abstraction whose main appeal is purely compositional.

Both images are from Here, which I assume will be part of his Website, which is under construction at the moment.

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Reflections Of Graffiti

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James Nye has a whole different perspective on realism and graffiti and to understand his train of thought it'd be best to read his almost too concise, Artist Statement.
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What attracted me to his work is the extra dimension that he's added in his four Manifest Expression Series of oil paintings. You feel like you're looking at and through reflections and the background itself is composed of more than one picture plane and subject. You find yourself thinking about everyday visuals that we consider boring in a whole new way.
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Image is from his Website.

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Painting Dots

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.....Tracey Adams' oeuvre is not dedicated solely to painting dots, but when she does, she imbues these geometric devices with personality. These are reminders of the simple pleasures of life. And although her Artist Statements on her Web Site and at the Patricia Rovzar Gallery do give some insight into her creative process, they do nothing to convey the particular reasons for doing the dots. Maybe there doesn't need to be a special reason. We don't need "wall text" to enjoy her paintings; the work stands on it's own.

She's also represented by Kathryn Markel Gallery.

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Top image is from her Website. ___Bottom image is from Patricia Rovzar Gallery.

Postmodern Pointillism

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During a conversation about categorizing art so that our terminology would be more specific, my friend agreed that the term "abstract" was just way to inclusive. For example, the image below would fall into that category and yet it's still realistic enough for us to completely comprehend the subject matter. It's got the flavor of impressionism, yet it's done in a newer version of the pointillist style.
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Angelo Franco's oeuvre is an updated version of pointillism and he bends the rules just a bit sometimes to suit his needs. The results are bright and postmodern. You'll find lots of images to study at his Web Site, where he puts his Artist Statement front and center.

Paintings With Writing

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The work of Francois Bonjour is somewhat of an acquired taste. At first glance, some of his work looks like simple, beautiful mark-making, but more study reveals what looks like writing in his paintings. That mystery draws you in as you try to make out letters and words and before you know it you're emotionally involved with the work. You'll be hard pressed to find a single item about him in English and it took some sleuthing to find descent images of his work. There is one site though that has plenty of images and a very intriguing video of his 2008 show.

When you go to his Web Site , click on Galleria and then you'll see images representing seven different exhibits. Click on an image, it enlarges and you'll notice the title to the left. Under that title, in VERY faint print, are the titles of other images that you can click and view. There is no back button function, so just click on Galleria again to return. Clicking on the 2008 Exhibit image automatically starts a wonderful video of that show, complete with music. And like the other pages, the clickable titles of other images are on the left, under the word Video. It's all much easier than it sounds and well worth the visit.

Three interesting pics form his show at Galleria Si Ringrazia are worth a look and then there's photos of the Vernissage of his 2007 show MACELLERIA D'ARTE (click on the impressionen von der Vernissage(link). ....Larger versions of those pictures can be found on Flickr.

image is from La Colomba

Language Based Paintings

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It's so heart warming to read the very simple and straight forward Artist Statement of Rebecca Woodhouse. I too, have often felt like there was so much that I wanted to say(in a painting) and yet wanted my thoughts to remain private. Her Statement really struck a chord with me. This truly is a case of "art as therapy".

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And yet her work is so much more than that. We're so used to abstracts that originated with visual imaginations and here we have beautiful, meditative paintings that have been constructed solely from language. These thoughtfully made jewels tantalize us with their mystery.

Both images are from her Website, where her Studio Shots give you a peek at the process.

Over The River And . . .

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A few "experiments" by Philip Maltman to start the New Year.

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Riverunning

Thamesrun

Calligraphic Graffiti

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This is WEST, another tagger-come-in-from-the-cold who's gone from graffiti to abstract calligraphy.
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He's too, is represented by Galerie Magda Danysz, where you'll find a slideshow of his work and a very informative Bio. You'll especially want to check out the slide show of his "Anti Graff" exhibit.

Image is from Galerie Magda Danysz.