Spring has finally taken hold and color is exploding everywhere! And speaking of bursting color, make sure you go over to Escape Into Life today to see the work of German artist Markus Linnenbrink. He is masterful in his use of bright and brilliant hues!
The first time I saw the work of Jill Ricci, I was completely smitten. Her palette, use of texture, pattern and materials lend such a glamourous edge to her work. Wonderfully feminine and sophisticated yet rustic-ly urban. I’m giddy to have her as the Facebook Featured Artist for May! So much so that I find myself going to the Artsy Forager Facebook page just to gaze at her cover image. Is that weird?
Her work reminds me of the things I love so much about New York– the glamour and elegance of the city, its history and architecture, how it teems with life and colorful characters.
But even as we idealize the city, it hits us with its grittiness, its realness. As the song goes, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” Ricci’s work shares that same energy, stubbornness and passion.
Like apartment windows in the city, each portal in Ricci’s work is a glimpse into a different world– graphic niches to discover and explore.
If you haven’t done so already, head over to the Artsy Forager Facebook page to see an album of more of my Jill Ricci faves– tell me which is your favorite! And of course, check out her website for even more gorgeousness!
Featured image is Bullseye, mixed media on canvas, 48×24. All images are via the artist’s website.
Note: The title of this post is a reference to the original Dead or Alive song, not more recent versions featuring people who are possibly young enough to be my children. Children of the 80s unite!
I love art of all shapes and sizes. Large scale, small, square, rectangle, ROUND. Artists who take on the circular composition get extra kudos. Check out some examples I’m loving this week!
Jill Ricci | Steve Williams | Ben Hughes | Nicholas Bodde
Any other orb-obsessed artists I should know about? Tell me about ’em in the comments!
Featured image is Andy Says by Jill Ricci. Be sure to head over to the Artsy Forager Facebook page where Jill Ricci is this month’s featured artist! All images are via the artists’ websites, linked above. Special thanks to The Jealous Curator for introducing me to Ben Hughes’ work!
The way colors play off one another has always attracted me. There are certain designs I find myself staring at over and over again simply for the juxtaposition of hues and how they relate together. The work on Nicholas Bodde strikes my chroma-loving heart to the core.
Bodde’s work is beautiful in its simplicity and in its joyful exploration of color. Parallel, horizontal stripes race across the canvas in a controlled riot, almost like we’re looking out a car window while whizzing by a carnival or planted fields of flowers.
Especially in the works featuring wide bands of blue or orange at the top of the canvas, these seem like distilled landscapes. Complex scenes broken down to simple bands of color.
In this way, the placement of colors on the canvas and beside each other takes these away from being just painted stripes of color and into sophisticatedly designed patterns and compositions. And they simply make me happy.
To see more of Nicholas Bodde’s work, please visit his website. How are you embracing color these days?
Featured image is O.T., acrylic on aluminum, 100×56 cm. All images are via the artist’s website.
.. and not a drop to swim in. Well, without a wetsuit, at least here in Northern Idaho. What is it about the water that calls to us, calms our senses, rejeuvenates? These photographers might have a clue, as they’ve answered water’s siren song..
Philippe Cheng | Mertxe Alarcon | Neil Krug | Thomas Hager
To see more work from these artists, please visit their websites linked above. Happy weekend, Artsies!
All images are via the artists websites.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m far from a wild child. I tend to be calm, controlled, even-tempered. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to abstract expressionist work like a moth to a flame. And the work of Delray Beach artist Brenda Hope Zappitell is a fire this little moth can’t resist!
In her work, Zappitell “surrenders control to the paint, the brush and a visceral process of creative discovery” [sic]. She works spontaneously and rapidly, following the paint as it dances across the canvas.
Taking her inspiration from the energy of nature, her palette builds from light, delicate tints to saturated rapid-fire strokes of bold color.
Squiggles and strokes that could almost be graffiti-like still retain their softness, like a flourishing garden in the middle of an urban metropolis.
To see more of Brenda Hope Zappitell’s work, please visit her website. You can see her work in person at several galleries across the US– be sure to check her website to see if there is one near you!
Featured image is Translation, acrylic with cold wax on panel, 60×30. All images are via the artist’s website.
There is a quiet power that abides in certain landscapes that compels us to humilty. No cell phone reception, no internet, no traffic whizzing by. Nothing to make us believe we are the center of the universe. Just earth and rock and water and light. It is in these places that the earth is welcoming, yet can be strong and unyielding. The work of New York artist, Claire Sherman captures the essence of the quiet, raw power of our natural world.
Sherman’s overall cool palette, tinged occasionally with warm tones conveys the earth’s reticent beauty. It wants us to explore and appreciate its wildness, but fears the mark our hand often leaves.
This is still a dangerous place. We often forget, wrapped safely in suburban cocoons, thinking we are master of all that we survey. Yet still in many places, one wrong step and we may become prey to the earth’s power. The artist’s linear, often jagged brushwork reminds us to tread carefully. She is beautiful, yes, but we must never forget her untamed nature. Try as we might to use her up, certain parts of the earth will always remain wild and inhospitable to man.
These places are for her renewing and for moments ours, but they belong to her. That we will do well to remember. To see more of Claire Sherman’s work, please visit her website. Her work can be seen in person at the Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago.
Featured image is Pile of Rocks, oil on canvas, 72×78. All images are via the artist’s website.
Living in places with so many wild areas, whenever we go out hiking, we’re still very aware of man’s impact on the landscape. Salt Lake City artist Thomas D. Aaron brings attention to the natural landscape and the effect of man’s hand upon it.
Aaron uses PLSS ( Public Land Survey System ) imagery as the jumping off point of his mixed media works. Focusing on manmade grids imposed upon the landscape and the paradigms they create with the natural order of the terrain.
The painterly textures mimic the natural terrain and in some, dominating brushwork overpowers the landscape, just our infrastructure has done the same to natural wild spaces.
To see more of Thomas D. Aaron’s work, please visit his website. To learn more about the motivation and ideology behind his work, check out his interview with Ellen Caldwell on the New American Paintings blog.
Artist found via New American Paintings.
Featured image is Lakeside Clouds, mixed media, 36×24. All images are via the artist’s website.
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.