For me, gorgeously styled movies and fashion photos are a guilty pleasure and voyeuristic escape. For a brief moment, I can imagine myself a part of a super fabulous, amazingly glamorous life. The work of Tallahassee artist Anna Kincaide Horne offers a similar experience in her elegantly painted figures.
Blue Tights Girl, oil on canvas, 48×3Blue Gloves, oil on canvas, 30×40
In my gallery days, I relished the chance to dress up for an opening or special event. Something about wearing heels and a little cocktail dress makes even a work event just a bit more exciting. These days, I ( like many of us! ) live my days in jeans and flip flops. Events for elegant dress are few and far between.
Happy Hour, oil on canvasEveryone Wants to be Cary Grant, oil on canvas, 30×30
Yet, life still feels glamorous to me. Mr. Forager and are pretty fortunate, we live a life filled with travel and discovery. Even if we’re living it casual-style.
Artist found via Stellers Gallery in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. All images are via the artist’s website.
While Mr. Forager & I are on the road, making our way to California, we’re rerunning Artsy Forager’s most popular posts. This post originally published on May 2, 2011, when the blog was barely two months old. Enjoy!
In honor of Cinco De Mayo this week, I thought we’d focus today on the amazing Frida Kahlo. When I was in painting classes in college, I remember there being this older Bolivian lady who was auditing the classes and she was obsessed with Frida Kahlo. She was sweet but somewhat obnoxious. For a long time, the fact that she was so obsessed with Kahlo managed to turn me off on her artwork. Weird how our minds work sometimes.
But then, somewhere along the line, I let go of this irrational bias and took another look at Kahlo and her work. And I was quickly won over. Health problems plagued Kahlo from a young age, suffering first from polio and then being severly injured in a horrific car accident which left her in a full body cast and bedridden for three months. Though she eventually recovered from her injuries, extreme pain would torment her for the rest of her life.
Two Fridas
Before the accident, Kahlo was studying to become a physician, but she dealt with the boredom of being confined to bed by taking up painting with her father’s watercolors. And so, Frida Kahlo, the artist was born.
Kahlo’s work often included symbols of Mexican mythology, as well as those of Christian and Jewish faiths. Though she is perhaps best known for her self-portraits, often depicting events in her own life, such as the accident, subsequent miscarriages, etc.
She married renown Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera in 1929 and their life together was a tumultous one.
Her work has been described as surrealist, but I think it is the unvarnished depiction of her real life pain and struggle that makes her work so interesting and relatable. We may not have all been through the kind of physical pain Kahlo experienced, but perhaps it is that we can all certainly relate to her emotional pain and the need to express it on canvas.
Be sure to check out the official Frida Kahlo website. A beautifully designed site full of interesting information about the artist.
While Mr. Forager & I are on the road, making our way to California, we’re rerunning Artsy Forager’s most popular posts. This post originally published on January 23, 2012. Enjoy!
The other night, we caught a bit of a Travel Channel show in which Andrew Zimmern visited a tribe in Madagascar, whose ritual tradition dictates that a boy becomes a man at the age of five years old. Jewish boys celebrate coming into manhood with a Bah Mitzvah at age thirteen. The work of photographer Jessica Maria Manley explores the idea of whether societies can truly define what is appropriate based solely on an individual’s age. Is a boy really a man at five? Thirteen? Twenty-one? Forty-five?
At the Lake
Manley’s haunting images of her young subject, Melissa, show the young girl engaging in those activities so many little girls enjoy– playing dress up, playing with make-up, pretending to be grown-ups. How many of us did the same?
Melissa and Her Toys
Some of the imagery may be a bit off-putting, even disturbing as we see a little girl exploring an adult’s world. But how often are children thrust into situations beyond their years? Or they feel pressured to be tiny adults?
Make-up In the Living Room IIUntitled
Manley’s images may be a visual representation of the societal pressures kids feel every day, in every nation. They could also be interpreted as imaginings of a woman who is chronologically an adult, but still feels the vulnerability and smallness of a child.. A woman whose childhood was robbed of her.
To see more of Jessica Maria Manley’s intriguing work, please visit her website. Her provocative photos touched me, hope you find them as thought provoking as I did.
Featured image is On the Dock, 2011. All images are via the artist’s website.
While I adore abstract expressionist work full of large, sweeping strokes, I do occasionally want to gaze upon work that you really need to consume. Work so full of rich layers and details that makes you want to study it, taking in every symbol and nuance. So of course, when Irish artist Gavin Lavelle emailed me his work, it felt so rich, so Bosch-like, I couldn’t wait to share it. Lavelle is featured in my Artist Watch over on Escape Into Life today, so head on over there and gaze awhile. You’ll be mesmerized!
Living the way we do, Mr. Forager and I are no strangers to feeling like outsiders in a new place. We try to make a new town home every three months. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to move to a completely new country, where perhaps you don’t even speak the language or where you noticeably stand out due to the color of your skin. The work of Mexican-born Memphis artist Fidencio Martinez deals with such feelings of social alienation, assimilation and isolation.
Clandestino, acrylic paint and newspaper, 12×12
Although Martinez’s figures tend to be Latino or indigenous, we’ve all likely experienced some level of isolation. Yet do we really have any idea what it might be like to be live in a place fraught with danger, one you flee in order to be able to live your life free of fear?
A Coup Beneath Meek Flores, mixed media, 12×12Nos Caimos Como Balas, mixed media, 12×12
What if, when all you wanted was to be able to live a quiet, happy life in your new world, you were constantly met with hate and prejudice? Would you be able to accept such treatment with a sanguine attitude?
La Cosecha de Su Vida, mixed media, 24×36
Can you relate to Martinez’s work? When do you feel like an outsider? You can see more of Fidencio’s work on his website and be sure to check out his Etsy shop for his available work for sale!
Artist found via Clair Hartmann. Featured image is Teal Fields in Skin Seas, mixed media, 12×12. All images are via the artist’s website.
Coming from the South, I had this image in my mind of the Northwest– open minded and full of diversity. And it is like that, in major cities like Seattle and Portland. But in the small towns we’ve lived in and especially for the last 10 months spent in Coeur d’Alene, ID, we’ve found diversity pretty hard to come by. We get used to all of the faces looking like ours. The work of New York artist Margaret Bowland explores what it means to be beautiful outside the expected standard– tall, thin, white.
Flower Girl #2, oil on linen, 48×48
Bowland contends, via her artist statement, that “being beautiful is as as important as being rich, that being beautiful is itself a form of wealth.” Women have, for centuries, tirelessly sought to conform to the celebrated standard of beauty at the time. Bowland’s images of young black girls with sad, painted faces convey what it must be like to be asked by society to put a mask over your own unique beauty in order to be accepted.
Color, pastel and charcoal on paper, 37x 48Portrait of Kenyetta and Brianna, oil on linen, 72×80
We feel compelled either by our environment or by ourselves ( or more likely a combination of the two ), to comply to what we are told is beautiful. Stay hungry all the time to be thin, dye your hair, whiten your teeth, don’t be too pale.. don’t be too dark. When will we, as individuals and as societies realize that to homogenize beauty only serves to promote what is ugly within ourselves.
Flower Girl, oil on linen, 44×52
To see more of Margaret Bowland’s work, please visit her website.
There is something so intriguing about an artist who chooses to focus on drawings on paper. It seems like such an introspective type of expression. Today in my Artist Watch on Escape Into Life, I’m featuring artist Joe Sinness, whose quiet works scream for your careful attention..
These last four months of living on a lake in Northern Idaho has had its advantages, wildlife spotting being chief among them. A favorite post-dinner activity of Mr. Forager & I is to take a long walk in the hopes of spotting a few deer, osprey, rabbits and lately, turkeys(!). While Mr. F loves to fantasize about how awesome it would be to be a bird of prey, I tend to humanize the animals we see. I like to think they are more like us than we realize. Today, I’m featuring a few artists who seem to also love blending the line between humanity and the animal.
To Fall for Flattery by Nate FrizellBeyond the Menagerie by Kareena ZerefosRenard by Charlotte CaronSabrina Hornung
I would love to commission Charlotte Caron to create a portrait of Mr. Forager as a grizzly bear– it would be his ultimate dream come true! What animal do you see yourself as?
Charlotte Caron found via The Jealous Curator, Sabrina Hornung found via Lost at E Minor. All images are from the artist’s websites, linked above.
The advent of photography has really shaped us into an incredibly visual society. While having a portrait painted was a luxury usually afforded to the most privileged, photographs were soon accessible to people of all classes and incomes. Photography became a common experience, faces of us all, captured forever. Charleston artist Greg Hart takes his inspiration from historical portraits, concentrating on the emotional expression of the sitter.
Bandage, charcoal, graphite, coffee, acrylic, oil and gesso on wood panel, 11×14
Hart pours through historical archives, searching for a face that grabs him. He strives to remain ignorant of the details of each person’s background, preferring instead, to give us new portraits, carrying the same emotional intensity made even more impassioned by color blocking and dramatic rendering against isolated backgrounds.
Firebrand, graphite, acrylic and coffee on paper, 15×22Bygone, mixed media on paper, 22×30
Serious, stern faces are rendered more warmly, softly reminding us that behind these steely facades are real people who lived and loved, just as we do.
Forward March, mixed media on wood panel, 9×12
To see more of Greg Hart’s work, please visit his website and be sure to check out his shop at Big Cartel to make one of these intriguing portraits your own!
Featured image is Firebrand ( cropped ). All images are via the artist’s website and Big Cartel shop.
I love artwork that transports me into a different world. The paintings of Ontario artist Janet Hill gives us a peek at a sweet and beautiful life, where all is loveliness and cheerful color.
Goldfinch
Her figures, lovely and graceful, entrance and enchant, her palette of sepias punctuated with bright, saturated color takes us back in time like faded photographs.
GiraffesGeneral Custard
Hers is a world that feels like that magical afternoon hour.. you know the one.. when the sunlight is just the right shade, streaming through the window and giving everything in its path a magical glow. A world that is accessibly glamorous, where even the most mundane task is done with delicious joie de vivre!
Entanglement
Seriously, doesn’t her work just make you smile? See more of it on her website and in her Etsy shop– lots of beautiful, affordable prints to be found! Perfect for girlie girls, big and small.
Featured image is Lady and the Lobster. All images are via the artist’s website.
