Spring is finally here! This season always brings with it such a renewed sense of energy and love of life. While I’m enjoying a day of renewal of my own following our Seattle weekend, I hope you’ll enjoy the work of Anne Ten Donkelaar.
Please visit Anne Ten Donkelaar’s website to see more of her beautiful work. Be back in full swing tomorrow!
Featuerd image is Flower Construction #3 ( detail ). All images are via the artist’s website.
Take a look back with me on Escape Into Life today! I’m in love with the nostalgic pop culture work by California artist Robert Townsend.
I love work that speaks to me on several levels. ( Yes, I can hear the artwork talking to me! ) The work of Philadelphia artist Jackie Tileston seems to communicate to us from several worlds at once.
Atmospheric foundations hint at other-worldly landscapes filled with mystery, while pops of graphic color and pattern create a layer of modern visual language.
Linear color leads the eye to dance across each composition against backgrounds of painterly texture. Tileston’s surfaces fairly crackle with excitement and visual energy.
To see more of Jackie Tileston’s work, please visit her website.
Featured image is Auspicious Circling of Mad Utopias, oil and mixed media on linen, 72×60. All images are via the artist’s website.
When I launched the Artsy Forager Facebook Featured Artist program this month, I was thrilled when Steve Williams agreed to be my inaugural artist. Like me, Steve is a native of our hometown, Jacksonville, Florida and has long been a fixture on the art scene there. Steve, along with his then gallery partner, Jim Draper, encouraged a young Artsy Forager to continue painting just out of college. Even though I allowed myself to get sidetracked, I never forgot their kindness.
As he splits his time between being president of his family’s successful sign business, Harbinger Sign, the gallery he has created at the business’s headquarters, Florida Mining, his own work as an artist AND being a devoted father of three, Steve is a busy soul. Which makes it all the more amazing to see the quality of thoughtful work he creates.
His experience in the sign business is evident in the strong graphic quality and balance evident in his compositions. His most recent Money series ( images above ) explores currency as symbolic of all that we strive for as a society yet ensnares and imprisons us.
While I love this current direction, my personal favorite works of Steve’s are those that incorporate layers of texture and color in which graphic signs and images are enshrouded. These works, as well as the Money series, invite us in, asking us to look more closely at not only the world around us, but the motives and desires within us.
I hope you’ll check out more of Steve Williams‘ work on his website. And do yourself a favor– don’t miss his blog, Making Cheddar, or his Twitter feed. He’s as hilarious as he is insightful.
Featured image is Grant, mixed media, 60×36. All images are via the artist’s website.
If you’ve been reading Artsy Forager for a while, you may have noticed me mention the love my hubby & I have for Seattle. He was living there when we began dating and although we’d known each other a long time before, it was in the Emerald City that we truly fell in love. Exactly 2 years from this Sunday, I flew to Seattle to celebrate my birthday ( the 15th ) and George’s birthday ( the 11th ) and to truly test the waters after 12 years of friendship, 1year of online flirting and 1 month of long distance dating. Not only did I fall madly in love with George, I fell hard for the city of Seattle. So we’re heading there on Sunday to spend a few days soaking in the delights of our favorite city. Needless to say, I’m pretty Seattle obsessed today. Hope you enjoy these artists’ renditions of our city of love!
Deborah Scott | Julia Hensley | Michael Prince | Marie Gagnon | Robin Weiss
Have a fantastic weekend! Posts will be going up as normal for the next few days, but I’ll only be online sporadically to answer questions and approve/respond to comments. See you on Wednesday!
Featured image is The Original Starbucks at Pike Place Market, Seattle by Marsha Glaziere. All images are via the artists’ websites.
“There is nothing new under the sun”, ( Ecclesiastes 1: 9 ). Each generation thinks they are better than the last, but if that were so, why do we as a human race continue to repeat our old patterns and mistakes? Colombian artist Randy Mora, takes vintage ephemera and creates digital collages that explore ideas that may seem to be modern yet still hearken to the styles of eras past. His work reminds us that time has not erased our patterns and prejudices.
Mora’s illustrations seem to show us that none of the issues we face today is really all that new. Man is man and has been of a similar nature since his beginning.
There has always existed a quest for wealth, for supremacy, for power and subjugation. It seems to be in man’s very nature to isolate ourselves with others who are like us, judging and condemning those who are not.
We live in a world divided between “us” and “them”, being taught from an early age to look out for ourselves first, creating within us cynical, fearful souls who become so self-centered we are unable to empathize and understand anyone whose views may be different from our own.
The inability to empathize and see the world from someone else’s point of view too often breeds in us feelings of first fear, then of superiority. Why are we afraid? Why do we think ourselves better than another? Each of us is born in the same way, completely innocent and knowing nothing of the world. To see more of Randy Mora’s work, please visit his website.
Artist found via Escape Into Life.
Featured image is Este Año Sí…, commission for Dinero, Business & Economy Magazine. All images are via the artist’s website.
“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans..”, is a favorite John Lennon quote of mine. Often, it’s those unexpected moments that bring the most joy. Austin artist Caroline Wright’s work is full of incidental beauty.
Abstract painters like Wright know that these happy accidents contribute to the rhythm and spontaneity so many of us love about abstract work.
Her work has wonderful little punctuations of color that keep the eye moving across the surface. But it’s the unintentional drips and marks that really make each piece soar and create tiny little compositions waiting to be discovered.
Even in her quieter compositions, such as the watercolor & mixed media below, the accidents are more subtle. The way the colors are delicately placed and soak into each other create soft, exquisite transitions.
To see more of Caroline Wright’s work, please visit her website.
Featured image is Rain Poncho, acrylic, watercolor and pencil on handmade watercolor paper, 30×22. All images are via the artist’s website.
I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the beauty of the natural world lately. As the weather warms, the hubby and I are getting out and doing more hiking ( we may actually be hiking when you read this! ). I love the natural, microcosmic beauty of Laura Gurton’s work being featured over on Escape Into Life today.
If you get out exploring, take a close look at the small worlds happening around you!
Sometimes, I find an artist’s work so powerful, that I can’t write about it immediately. When I found New York artist Lee Price’s work, I wanted to share it as soon as possible, but just couldn’t write about it yet. So I featured her on my Artist Watch over on Escape Into Life, where I can simply post images, a bio and a link.
Having been naturally thin and active almost my entire life, up until recently, I’ve never really had weight issues. There were times I actually wished to be a little more curvy, more womanly. But as I approach the big 4-0 next week (!), I find myself struggling more than ever with my body image. Having listened to every woman I know complain about her body at one time or another, I know that I am not alone.
Lee Price’s work speaks to food obsessions and compulsions so common, especially among women. Her pastel, candy-colored palette belies the darkness at the heart of each painting. Her women are isolated, surrounded not by friends, family or lovers, but by piles of food, rarely untouched.
Constantly bombarded with conflicting media, we, as women, are often left feeling inadequate and confused. We retreat into ourselves, indulging when we are alone so that the only judgement we’ll feel is our own. Will we ever stop condemning ourselves so harshly?
For me, its still a struggle to make the right choices. Gone are the days of being able to eat whatever I like and still be a size 5. But also gone are the days of eating like a bird and obsessing over the way my body looks in a bikini. I may be a bit more curvy, but I’m choosing to be happier than ever. For me, it’s been a choice worth making.
To more of Lee Price’s work, please visit her website.
