And all that jazz.

Cate Parr is a fashion illustrator from England who lives in Los Angeles. I really like her paintings because I like the way that she uses the watercolor. He works focus mainly on the face of her subjects and everything else seems to wash or drip away in rich colors. My favorite is the one with the Indian apparel on. I think that the eyes are well done and even though it uses bright color, it seems peaceful. The abstract designs used on her jewelry and eyelashes also add interest to the piece. I like the way that she blends colors to create an abstract shape around the subject. I love the mixture of watercolor and ink as well, I think that it gives the works a sort-of edgy feel to them.

Indian Bride

Model Ink 3

Check out her work here: http://www.cateparr.com

Mark Demsteader is a figurative artists based in England. He works with pastels and gouache and focuses most of his works on the female figure. Demsteader has a very unique style; using very little background at all, his models still seem incredibly realistic – as if they could start moving at any second. His paintings also seem to have a story too them. He does both drawings and paintings, and his drawings have a more eerie vibe to them. They are darker and a bit more smeared, and most of them are not completed (on purpose) which makes it even more spooky and mysterious. I really like his work because I think that people are the most interesting subjects and he does such a good job capturing  emotions not only with the expressions of the subjects but with their poses as well. He also did a study of only Emma Watson, which I think is interesting!

Ciprana large head study

Ciprana standing
Pastel

Ink study 5 (Emma Watson)
Ink on Indian

Shallow Waters
Oil on canvas

See more of his stuff here: http://demsteader.com

Lee Friedlander is an American photographer who got started in the 1950’s as a photographer for jazz musicians. I really love his photographs because even those that do not feature a musician as the subject seem to have a jazzy feel to them. He wanted to capture the “social landscape” of America and did so by mostly focusing on urban life. I would not call his photographs depressing, but they are certainly melancholy. Friedlander has this really cool series called “Self-Portrait” as well. The cool part about these photographs is that he only appears as a reflection, shadow, or some other non-obvious form. Many of his portraits have the subjects or object in unique poses or are framed uniquely. I think that many of his works, especially those of urban landscapes show the dark and cold industrial growth of his time. He also captures the more melancholy side of every day life from within living rooms and behind shop windows. With most of his photos being black and white, even in the seventies and eighties, they have a nostalgic and sad feel to them. However, even in those photographs where he did use color, the colors are limited and there are still a lot of shadows which keep with the mood of his other works. He captured the dark and smokey side of what was going on around him during each decade.

Manuel “Fess” Manetta. New Orleans, Louisiana
Gelatin silver print
1957

Virginia
Gelatin silver print
1961

Baltimore, Maryland
Gelatin silver print
1962

Ray Charles
Inkjet print
1959
Printed 1998 by David Adamson

Brushstrokes and Rayographs

Andrew Salgado is a London based artist who works mostly with paint. His paintings are interesting to look at because of their bright colors and intense, fast and sharp brush strokes. He says in his statement that the style in which he creates his works is an attempt to “explore the correlation between the concept of masculinity and the properties of the medium”. His works, though the subjects may seem simple, are incredibly deep and delve into the question of one’s identity and the concept of self-awareness. His use of color, which helps to bring about the noise and confusion that comes with the subject of identity, as well as his abstraction of forms and wild brush strokes all add to the mood of his paintings. To me, his works seem to have a sort of anger and confusion to me. I was drawn to his paintings, however, because of his use of brushstrokes. I love seeing brushstrokes in paintings and I love when an artist makes the medium in which a subject is done just as important as the subject itself.

“Fracture”
Oil on canvas
200X150cm

“The bacchanal”
Oil on canvas
120X100cm

See more of his works here: http://www.andrewsalgado.com

His website makes me scared to put any of his works on here, but David Hockney is so cool! I’m sure most of you all know who he is, but just in case you don’t, I wanted to talk about him. Plus, I wanted to research him a bit more than I previously had. I know a good bit about his works (I love both his photos and his paintings) but not so much about him. He, despite his goofy glasses, is a bit of a play boy and ran with a wild crowd of artists such as Andy Warhol (one of my favorites). In college, his artwork told stories (what I hope to do with mine) and he was not so good with his art history classes (like me). Hockney loves California, which is why he made it his home, and that is why many of his works, both paintings and photographs, seem to be inspired by the colorful, beachy atmosphere of California. I also did not realize that photography was not Hockney’s main focus, but he only got into it after painting and only began creating photo collages later in his career, the 1980’s. I also love that Hockney embraces new technology so well and has never minded having his life and love-life on display to the public.

If you want to look at some of his works, go here: http://www.hockneypictures.com

Man Ray, although he is no longer living, was such an interesting man and artist that I really wanted to learn more about him. I love the time period in which he worked. Paris in the 20’s seems to be the place to have been if you were a creator, whether of stories or art. Ernest Hemingway is my favorite author, Picasso is one of my favorite artists (I won’t write about him though, don’t worry Professor Skees!). But, I have never really looked much into Man Ray until I saw those photographs at the Maharaja exhibit. He, like Hemingway, was an American living in Paris. He not only took photographs but he painted and made videos as well. He worked a lot in the styles of surrealism and the dada movement. I was fuzzy on what exactly the Dada movement was, so here is a description:

The Dada movement – This artistic (and literary movement) was a result of negative reactions from artists, writers, and intellectuals to World War II, especially in Europe. It is a sort of non-art movement. Works in this movement were completely illogical and almost silly. They rejected any realism and strived toward the ridiculous.

Man Ray’s works are interesting because there is so much variety in it. He really experiments with his mediums and even created his own version of a photogram called the “Rayograph” which is exposing objects, usually everyday objects, straight onto photo-sensitive paper. However, his photographs are my favorite! As with all of his other mediums he was not afraid to experiment with different techniques. His portraits, what he is most famous far, are wonderful. He could really capture the subjects and each of his photographs has a certain intimacy about it.

The last one of the woman’s neck and chin is my favorite. I am not sure why. I think it is because it is so different, not many would think to just take a photograph of someone’s neck, but it is really elegant, intimate, and beautiful.

 

Rayograph
Gelatin silver print
1923

Torso
Gelatin silver print
1923

 

 

Anatomies
Gelatin silver print
1929

Alice X. Zhang, AKA “alicexz” or “silverge”, is a designer and illustrator based in New York City. She designs t-shirts, posters and paints portraits. She does a lot of works featuring famous people or characters from TV shows and movies. Her portraits, like Salgado, feature very visible “brushstrokes” and vibrant colors. However, most of her paintings are digital. She brings a new look at familiar faces. Although she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design as a Graphic Designer, she wishes that she had chosen illustration. She, like me, likes to illustrate books, movies, TV shows that she loves.

 

“Stood beneath an orange sky”

http://portfolio.alicexz.com/

Adventures in RVa (and some painting on the side)

Last Saturday, my aunt took my mom, sister, and I to the VMFA to hear the lecture about and see the Maharaja exhibit (which ends August 19th). At first I wasn’t sure that I liked the sound of a lecture, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only was the food that they had there delicious (lamb/veggie samosas, roasted vegetables, naan bread, chai tea), but the lecture actually really helped. The amount of information and background for this exhibit is crazy, there is so much! And we only had like an hour to look because it was the last tour of the day. It didn’t hurt that the curator for this exhibit looked like Richard Gere’s younger, better-looking brother.

I had never really looked into Indian or South Asian art, but I really loved this exhibit. Most of the works were done with opaque water colors, with gold placed on top. However, as the Maharajas became more westernized, the paintings become more oil based.

My three favorite paintings were 1) This beautiful little watercolor painting (about 5X7) of a woman flying a kite, which was supposed to mean she was longing for a lost lover. The second was this huge, it took up a whole wall, oil painting of a festival for the new King of England, but they did it in the tradition of the Indians. It shows the parade of elephants with the kings seated on top with the palace in the background. I think that I loved it so much because of how well the artist captured the lighting. And because it is so big, it almost feel like you’re there watching it. Like you are waiting for the painting to start moving. The third was a series of three photographs of a Maharaja and his queen, taken by Man Ray. My favorite of the three is one where the queen is upside down laughing and the Maharaja is just looking at her and smiling.

I thought that the Man Rey photographs were really cool because I never really thought about the Maharajas like that. Usually, to be honest, I just think of the kid from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom:

Anyways, I just wanted to share that little adventure – so fun! I love the VMFA. If you wanna read more about the exhibit, go here: http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/exhibitions/maharaja.aspx

—

I’ve also done a few little random paintings (they don’t really go with the concept, but I wanted to show y’all anyway)!

Whale v. Crow

Gob

And here’s my little work buddy. I have no idea what I am going to do without him next week when I go back to Newport News…

 

 

Film isn’t dead.

I adore film photography. The anticipation when you develop a photo and see it slowly come into being under the glow of the red lights as you submerge it in the developer. For me, it has a rock and roll feel to it. Not just in the dark room, with the red lights and classic rock, but when you are out photographing as well. The click-and-wind sounds, the look of the old 35mm cameras, the gritty black and white photographs that you end up with, the light leaks…all of it. Recently while researching artist, I found iO Tillett Wright. Wright is self taught and shoots almost exclusively with film, primarily in black and white. The subjects and themes her photographs show her love of youth and freedom. Tillet-Wright founded and served as editor of her own magazine Overspray at the young age of 18. IO has also be a curator shows both nationally and internationally.

Wright is an incredibly bad-ass female film photographer who has photographed a number of different subjects. Including:

 rock stars – not just rock stars of music

Wright keeps a blog with the New York Times style magazine called, “Notes From the Underground” which features one photo and a short text describing whichever performance she saw that week. The performances can be anywhere in the world, and range from music and theater to fine art and cross dressers.

Iggy Pop

Miss Tickles

 

 underground boxers (for a photo essay for the New York Times: “Friday Night Throwdown”)

This essay became legendary and was about a series of illegal boxing matches in downtown New York. In each match, male models were pitted against professional boxers and street fighters.

She doesn’t only do portraits, however. She also shoots landscapes, weird scenes and random objects:

She also likes to experiment with the way light moves in photos using slow shutter speeds, etc.

 

In  2010 New York Times Magazine editors asked thirteen photographers to create  a portfolio of portraits of people in their 20’s. These photos were to illustrate an article called, “Emerging Adulthood”. All of these photos, some her selection for the magazine, were shot on an iPhone (a requirement for the piece). Pretty sweet!

 

“I don’t just dabble, i RELISH the candidness, the freedom, and the lack of pretension in people’s moments of abandon and unawareness. these scant seconds are rare in this cauldron of narcissism we call a town! i hunt these moments like rare animals. can i be blamed? or should i be scolded for desiring to hang these explosions of endorphins on gallery walls to show that our generation does have ‘myspace-free’ moments?”

– IO Tillet Wright

 

Check out more of her stuff (she is really interesting, totally worth a look): http://www.darlingdays.com/iO_Tillett_Wright_home.html

 

Painting with Papa

Last summer (I know this is an old story, but I wanted to share), by grandpa asked if I could give him some painting lessons;  instead, he taught me.

I had NO idea where I wanted to start this lesson. Then I realized, at least for me, painting is all about capturing your world the way that it appears to you. So, that’s what I told him to do. I showed him how to mix the oil paints with the medium, but other than that we decided to just free-paint, and I would give him pointers or answer any questions that he had as we went along.

My grandparents live in a beautiful house named “Glen Beau” which was built in 1776 and sits on 500 acres; most of which is farmland, forest, and my grandfathers beautiful gardens. So, where to paint became the real question. We settled on the black fountain in the back of the house on the brick patio, with the gorgeous back porch and columns in the background.

We set up our easels and paint and were silent for an hour and a half. All I could hear was the trickling of the water and the occasional call of a peacock in the background. Most people might think that it would be hard to bond, or teach without talking, but that’s not true. Sometimes words can ruin a moment, and this was one of those times.

After a relaxing hour and a half, I looked over at my papa’s easel. The pupil had far outdone the teacher. I didn’t even want to believe him that he didn’t know what he was doing. While I had tried to go with a more realistic style, he had stylized his painting. It had a sort of Indian-vibe to it, and was beautiful. Mine was not bad, but not good either. It was boring. It looked like every other garden painting. But his was so interesting to look at. I told him over and over how much I loved it and how it was way better than mine, but he thought that I was just being nice. He said mine was better.

It just shows you how differently we all see things. Papa pointed that out as well, saying we had been looking at the same thing but our paintings could not have been more opposite. I was so proud and impressed with him, and I was so happy to share something that is so important to me with him and get to connect via art. It was also interesting to see his take on our subject, and how abstracted and stylized he had made it! It is amazing what you learn about a person when you put a paint brush in their hand.

Eclectic post.

Although it is not what I am going to be focusing on for my senior seminar concept, photography is one of my favorite art forms. I love to try and capture a moment or feeling in a photograph and I especially love black and white photography. Russian artist Anka Zhuravleva (born Anna Belova), has lived an exciting and interesting life from working as a tattoo artist, singing in a rock-band, and posing nude in pictures featured in Play Boy magazine in order to make some money. As well as painting and sketching, Zhuravleva realized in 2006 that she was truly inspired by photography, and therefor moved her focus to photography. Her photographs are beautiful and usually feature people as their subjects. Most of her images have a solemn feel to them and her subjects appear sad or lost. She does a lot of different styles of photography including: classic black and white images, photo graphics, and themed photo series.

Her paintings have a sort of Picasso vibe to them, featuring people with oddly shaped bodies. Each painting is fairly monochromatic as well, either with mostly blues or mostly reds. Most of her subjects are either smoking or drinking as well, which may be influenced by her alternative life-style.

Zhuravleva’s drawings are linear and feature a lot of lines and textures. Although they are simple drawings, they are interesting in the designs she incorporates in them and their subject matter, which is strange and seemingly random. For example, one drawing features a naked, except for detailed socks, woman sitting on a table drinking from a mug while two rabbits sit and look out of a window. Another features three naked, bald women smoking from a hookah pipe with abstracted smoke as the background.

I can’t show her images on this blog because she has them copy-righted and I am unable to save them to put them up. But, you can check them out here: anka-zhuravleva.com

—

Alexandra Pacula created a series titled, “Painting Intoxicated at 100 MPH”. Pacula, born in Poland, is now based in New York. She attempts to render the ambiance of urban night life: the lights that smear as they fly by, people rushing to get to where they’re going, and a kind of rhythm that you find when a city lights up at night. I find this series interesting because I love lights. I love to take pictures with a slow shutter and see the movement of them and I love to paint cities at night, especially abstractly. Almost like a city in the rain. Her paintings are not abstract, really, but rather look like what you would see if you were in fact intoxicated and riding through the city. They almost give you that adrenaline-rush just looking at them. She does a good job capturing the excitement of a city at night as well as the way that time seems to blur when you are experiencing it.  These paintings are done with oil, in order to add texture and let the thick paint blur and disfigure the objects she is painting.

“I suggest motion in order to slow down the scene and capture the fleeting moments, which tend to be forgotten,” she says. “By interpreting lights in graphic or painterly ways, I create a sense of space, alluding to a hallucinogenic experience. I want the viewer’s eye to travel within my composition and experience a familiar exhilarating event of an actual nightly excursion.”

– Pacula

Her paintings do make your eye move with the obects in the painting. As if you are watching it happen in real time.

 

See more here: http://www.alexandrapacula.com/index2.php

—

Although her work is a little different than I think mine will be, Canadian artist Renee Nault uses the same mediums that I am planning on using to illustrate my concept – watercolors and ink. She uses line to create texture and gives a folky feel to her work like I hope to do with mine. Filled with color and character, her illustrations are interesting, though simple, because of her use of line and her interesting scenes and characters. Each work is different from the other, with different themes, colors, backgrounds. Nault grew up near the water and the influence of it is apparent in much of her work, which features sea life and the fluid, flowing lines created by water. Nature and wildlife are also recurring subjects in her works. She creates detailed designs and intricate lines which add texture to her works. My favorite is one of a ram wearing a suit.

Nuclear Winter

Tattoo

 

See more of her work on her website: www.reneenault.com

—

Elliot Brown, is a Los Angeles artist who paints, draws, and sculpts. His paintings and drawings are eclectic. While some are realistic and gritty, others are fantastical and brightly colored. The former have a dark feel to them and have a muted color scheme. These paintings are personal and see, to offer an inside look at their subjects’ lives. It is almost as if you feel bad for spying on someone when they are at a low point. The more colorful drawings and paintings use brighter colors and are not realistic at all. However, they are still dark – featuring creatures holding guns and carving symbols into trees. They also feature broken things, old used couches outside, and bottles in brown paper bags. All of his works seem to have an almost post-apocalyptic feel to them. All of his works have a lot of feeling to them. He gives his works an anger with the intense brushstrokes and his use of dark colors like brown and blue. Even in his brighter works, there are dark themes.

 

Here is his website: http://elliotbrownstudio.com

Girl Power.

Bec Winnel creates portraits using mainly colored pencil and pastels. The use of these two mediums makes her portraits even more feminine. It also gives them a delicate feel. While she used to be a graphic artist who drew and illustrated on the side, she is now a full-time artist who is inspired by nature and simplicity. This can be seen in the simplicity of her portraits, many of which do not have a background, or at least not a very detailed one. They also incorporate stuff from nature, such as flowers and birds.

“Through my art, I hope to evoke a sensual connection to my subjects while creating an affection for classic beauty, nature and nostalgia.”

– Winnel

Winnel’s portraits do create a sensual mood, both with the positions of the subjects, as well as with the emotion and sensuality she captures in their eyes and facial expressions. The muted or limited color palette also adds to the theme of classic beauty, and gives the works a vintage feel. She not only creates her own characters, but draws celebrities as well. Showing a simpler, sensual side to female celebrities that paparazzi and magazine photos don’t always capture.

I am just amazed by her ability to create such realistic portraits with colored pencils and pastels. Especially her technique for creating the texture of hair. I know I can’t get that kind of realism in my works usually, so I am always impressed with it. She also does a really nice job capturing feeling in the eyes of her subjects. Most of which seem to have a look of longing or desire in their eyes.

See more of her beautiful portraits here: http://becwinnel.com

—

Jessica Hess is an artist who works with many different mediums, including: oil, goauche, pencils, and ink. Much of her work focuses on urban landscapes, especially her paintings. She uses bright colors which make her paintings pop and almost seem like they are street art rather than just paintings of street art (if that makes sense…). She captures landscapes that most people would not think to paint. Rather than beautiful ocean and mountain scenes (which aren’t bad, don’t get me wrong), she paints more realistic and interesting scenes such as roads going under graffitied bridges, buildings covered in street art, alleyways, and old train-track bridges. I think that her style is awesome and she does such a good job creating a hip-hop feel in her works. I feel like I can relate to her work and style because, like Hess, I think that old, broken, abandoned places are so interesting and have so many stories attached to them.

“I do not have traditional notions of beauty in my art or otherwise. My subjects appeal to me because they are imperfect. The things that contribute to a building’s appeal are the same things that city planners and upright citizens try to snuff out of their communities. I have to find my locations before they get to them. I have lost count of how many of my subjects have undergone renovation or demolition and redevelopment after I paint them. It is sad. In this way I am a documentarian of a disappearing America.”

– Hess

“Bayview II”
Oil on Canvas
24×44

See more here! http://www.jessicahess.com

—

Megan Wolfe, an artist based in San Francisco, is inspired mostly by “urban wildlife”. She focuses on the movements of nature rather than the form, which she says better renders nature since it is always moving and evolving. The subjects of most of her paintings are birds. I really like her work because I think that seeing the brushstrokes in a painting is so cool. This may be because I am no good at details, so I use brushstrokes to convey what I want to rather than details, but either way – brushstrokes rock, and that is all her work is. Though most of her paintings are identifiable as birds even with their organic and almost-abstract feel, some of her paintings are purely abstract, filled with beautiful swirling lines. These paintings are also interesting and almost look like smoke, although, they could be just to show the pure motions of the birds – it is up to the viewer to interpret them. I think that her work is interesting because it is different and original. Her ideas behind her art are also interesting and focus a lot on the evolution and “bastardization” of wildlife, including humans, in order to cope and adapt with city life. As someone who has grown up in the country, I find this subject interesting and it makes me wonder how I could change to adapt to city life.

“Currently, my work is classified by galleries and press as “abstract”, though I feel that I’m still recording something that you can see in life.. it’s just movement, instead of form.”

– Wolfe

Learn more about her here: http://megwolfe.net

Portraits, comics, and prints – oh my!

One of my favorite things to draw/paint are people. Although it is difficult, it is fun to try and get the emotions and personalities into the work. Thanks to Spoke Art, who I am friends with on facebook – and you should be too, they’re awesome – I found a wonderful portrait artist, Michael Ramstead. Ramstead has a different style, although his portraits appear realistic for the most part, he includes (sometimes with more subtlety than others) dream-like images or backgrounds. It is almost as if you are looking at an old video or photograph. The colors that he uses and the smoothness of the brush strokes add a vintage feel to his paintings.

Ghost Box. Oil on Canvas. 16″ x 20″. 2012

Some of his works are more imp-ish featuring more fantastical subjects. While some are kind of silly or fun creatures, other paintings are extremely sad. Such as this painting of a dying girl, you can see her parents hands clasped in the background as she lies in bed. It appears that her life is leaving her body.

Manifestation. Oil on Canvas. 36″ x 24″. 2011

Other paintings are more dark, yet they keep the same mix of realism and fantasy as the others.

The Slender Man. Oil on Canvas. 12″ x 24″. 2012

Harper and the Flood and the Ghost. Oil on Canvas. 20″ x 24″. 2012

Where You’ve Wandered. Oil on Canvas. 16″ x 12″. 2012

Though I have focused on his oil portraits, Ramstead also works with digital mediums as well as sketches. Check out more at his website: http://michaelramstead.com

—

Another artist that Spoke Art introduced to me is Steve Seeley. Seeley has a sort-of goofy style. It is much less realistic and has a pop art feel to it. His work is definitely left to the viewers interpretation and many of his works seem random. His works also feature a lot of comic book characters, animals, and themes from pop culture. Some of his works are gory, but in such a random way that they become amusing, at least to someone with a darker sense of humor like myself. Seeley is actually a comic book artist based in Chicago, but he does individual paintings as well. A lot of Seeley’s work is graphic art, and looks like something that you would see on a t-shirt at Urban Outfitters – which I like. Grizzly bears are also a recurring theme in much of his work. Many of his works also have a sort of folky feel to them, which makes them seem even more ridiculous because he makes impossible combinations seem realistic. This effect is also created when he puts his graphic drawings, paintings, etc. over photo-realistic backgrounds (or actual, washed-out, photographs). Although his works are funny and quirky, they do touch on subjects which resonate with everyone and make the viewer think; His works focus on subjects such as religion, pop-culture, gangs, etc.

untitled (blood superman)
acrylic on paper
14″ x 18″
2010

untitled (batman with bear)
acrylic on paper
7″ x 9″
2010

icon #2 (bear)
acrylic and gold leaf on paper
8″ x 11″
2009

Check out more of his work here: http://thedelicatematter.com

—

Keeping with the Spoke Art artists theme, the silk screened prints by Tim Doyle are phenomenal (one of which was done for a Black Keys poster). Doyle’s prints are extremely colorful and use a LOT of lines, which really gives them a lot of texture and interest. Each print is also very different, although in similar styles. Doyle lives in Austin, Texas and is both a print-maker and an illustrator. He was quiet and kept to himself, growing up in the Dallas suburbs (which he hated). He turned to comic books, video games, and T.V. Doyle is a bit nerdy (but I mean, really, who isn’t?). He has had a lot of different art and nerd-based jobs including: printing a self published diary zine called “Amazing Adult Fantasy”, owning comic book stores, designing shirts and art-directing a poster series. He now owns his own business Nakatomi Inc. as well as a print-making studio he shares with other artists, Nakatomi Print Labs. His nerdy, pop-art personality is clear in his works featuring creatures from outer space as well as new takes on national landmarks and monuments. His prints also have a comic book feel too them, which his background most likely influences.

The Black Keys
18×24. Edition of 300. Commissioned by the band for their upcoming show.

See more of his works here: (they are on flickr so I can’t put them on here!) http://www.mrdoyle.com

 

The art of music.

Music is an art form in and of itself, however, thanks to German painter and photographer Martin Klimas, it can also be used to create visual art and paintings. By putting paint on top of a speaker and turning the volume up extremely loud (loud enough for the speakers to vibrate), Klimas is able to paint with sound. He then photographs the sculpture-like paint as it is flung into the air by the vibrations of the speakers. Each photograph looks completely different and Klimas uses bright colors to really bring out the movement and make even the small drops of paint stand out. Klimas uses these photographs as “portraits” of the songs that he plays in order to create them. To get the images, Klimas spent 6 months and 1,000 shots. This seems like a long time to get everything right to me, but that may be because he makes it seem so easy. I love the way that music and art influence each other, and how he takes this idea and makes it literal. He told the New York Times that he is influenced by both abstract art and cymatics scientist, Hans Jenny.

Here are some examples of his work:

Miles Davis – “Pharaoh’s Dance”

Steve Reich and Musicians – “Drumming”

Check out more on his website: http://www.martin-klimas.de/

 

Taking a break from the Olympics

Today I am taking a break from the Olympics to get back on track with my artist research! Well..I am kind of taking a break; I only muted the TV. Also, if you are into the Olympics (which, you should be), a UK website has a really cool two-week series called, “The Olympics in Art”. In this series they focus on different artists’ interpretations, reactions, or illustrations of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

For example, here is David Hockney’s take on the opening ceremonies:

While Olafur Eliasson created art with light, to symbolize the speed and dynamism of the athletes participating in the games. He said, “‘Light generates action: it is an energy transmitter and as physical as anything you will see in the Games.”

Here is the site where they are: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/picture/2012/jul/31/art-olympics-games-olafur-eliasson

First up, some amazing body painting! This doesn’t really apply to what I want to do with my art, but is still really cool nonetheless. Craig Tracy is an artist from New Orleans, and has been a professional artist since he was 16. He currently lives in San Francisco, but travels all over the world. In order to do his body paintings, he uses a variety of techniques, though most is traditional paint-brushing. Some of his works are nature-inspired, some are more abstract and some are more cultural. At first it was an experiment which he hoped would take him further into fine art, and up and above the contemporary art which he was becoming bored with. However, now he body paints exclusively and has his own gallery. His gallery is the first in the world completely dedicated to body-paintings, and he personally meets with both young and old who visit in order to help educate people on what body paintings are capable of.

Here is a behind the scenes look at the gallery:

Here are some examples of his work:

http://www.craigtracy.com/