January can be a tough month for some folks. I love the winter, but I understand how the cold air, brown grass and gray skies can get ya down. Which is why I love the work of this month’s Featured Artist, Christy Kinard so much– her paintings are like a warm breath of spring any time of the year!
But spring is still three months away, you say? Why not just infuse some warm and bright florals into your probably drab winter wardrobe? Your countenance and outlook will instantly cheer and chase away the January blues!
Want to see more work by our Featured Artist, Christy Kinard? Check out her website.
One of the things that continues to draw Mr. F and I to the Northwest is the bigness of this world. Everything just seems to exist on a grand scale here– trees tower, mountains loom, rivers stretch far and wide. In his sculptural work, artist Matt Wedel creates fantastical oversized forms and flowers, leaving no doubt that sometimes bigger is indeed better.
Wedel’s larger than life flowers and plant forms spring forth from craggy rock-like shapes, fairly bursting forth as if they simply cannot be contained. Color spills down from their petals, as if the life held therein is overflowing onto the rock below. Exaggerated faces and fantastical forms create a wonderland where we might come to recognize that humans really are so very small.
So much of what we see depends on how our eyes and brain work to create perception. Last week, I shared the work of a photographer who creates work to change our perception of the body. In her series, Things Fall Apart and Collection, artist Erin O’Keefe uses our methods of perception to create what seem to be three dimensional sculptures. Or are they?
Magicians and illusionists have been using our perceptions to create seemingly impossible tricks for centuries. In order to process information at such a rapid pace, our brains take short cuts for us, but sometimes, they get it wrong.
Erin O’Keefe crafts these “sculptures” from cut and torn photographic images. Using the visual elements within the images themselves, she creates the illusion of a three dimensional object. The “objects” are then photographed as if a piece of sculpture, further adding to the illusion and our brains’ confusion!
Were you fooled? To see more of the work of Erin O’Keefe, please visit her website. Be sure to have a peek at all her other stunning work!
What drew me to my college art history major wasn’t just the artwork itself, which obviously astounded me, but it was the stories of the artists themselves and how the way they lived influenced their work that fascinated me. In her grids of small scale works, London artist Holly Frean playfully gives us glimpses into art history and the lives of artists.
Small, seemingly insignificant moments like Rothko stretching or Picasso picnicking are captured alongside “larger” events like Lucian Freud painting Queen Elizabeth’sportrait. For all our adoration and their notoriety, works like Frean’s help us to remember that these master artists were every day people, experiencing much of the same mundane moments of life that we do, with a peppering of the extraordinary.
In these tiny little images, we get a film-strip like glimpse into a day or event in the life of the artist. Frean keeps her compositions simple so that much is conveyed with a small amount of visual information. The grids read almost like an Instagram feed, screen captures of each instant, which may reveal much or leave much to the imagination.
‘Tis the season for transformational decision making aka New Year’s resolutions. We’ve all made our lists of who we’d like to be by the end of 2014– physically, mentally, emotionally. We start off the year with such hopes and expectations for ourselves. We make concrete goals but have we given consideration to changes in thinking and perception? What if instead, we concentrated on how we see ourselves? In her Models as Surfaces series, photographer Isabelle Wenzel challenges our perceptions by treating the human body as sculpture.
We most likely think of ourselves in labels that have been put upon us by others– she’s the pretty one, he’s the funny one, etc. But we are so much more than who we are pigeonholed to be. We have the power to transform ourselves, just as Wenzel’s models transform their bodies into headless, sculptural shapes.
So maybe our resolutions shouldn’t be so much goal oriented as perception oriented. Instead of a resolution to create a painting a week, how about a goal of changing your perception of how you see yourself as an artist? Or instead of the highly popular diet resolution, change the way you view food and how your think about your own body. We can change our minds first and the rest will follow. I’m resolving to give it a shot! Who’s with me?
Mr. Forager and I have been talking a lot lately about our eventual home. We have no idea where exactly it will be located, but we keep honing in on what our wants and needs will be. While we love the idea of building our own from scratch, so that we suit it precisely to our needs and desires, I can’t help but keep going back to the idea of reviving a home that has lost its luster. These paintings by Memphis artist Jared Small celebrate the past lives of decaying structures and perhaps give a nod to the potential sparkle still to be found.
Small uses light to great effect in showcasing these structures, using it to add emotionality and personality to each composition. In some, the houses recede into the darkness, shy and retreating, like a scared child hiding behind his mother’s legs. But for others, the houses are lit up and gleaming through the darkness like a beacon, letting us know that although the outside may seem run down, there is still hope and joy to be found therein.
To see more of Jared Small‘s work, please visit his website. If you happen to be in the Memphis area, you can see his work in person at the David Lusk Gallery.
Happy 2014, Artsies! I can hardly believe we have turned the calendar over to a new year so soon! 2013 was a year filled with changes and opportunities, some worked out, some didn’t, but I hope we all have come out stronger and wiser and read to take on the world in the year ’14! I’ve lined up a slew of fabulous artists taking part in the monthly Featured Artist program ( going strong for nearly 2 years now! ) for this year and am excited to kick off the year with the lovely work of Memphis artist Christy Kinard, who’ll be gracing the blog and AF social media all this month!
Like me, Christy is a Southern girl whose work lovingly reflects the bounty and color of life in the South. Southerners in general are great lovers of beauty, and often lovingly tend gardens exploding with color. In these mixed media paintings, Christy weaves a tale of Southern charm and tradition, taking inspiration not only from Southern gardens and flora, but also from quilt making and childhood memories.
Her work has layers of texture and color, much like life anywhere, deeply rich and filled with meaning, memory and secrets. The bouquets she chooses to paint aren’t necessarily prim and proper, they’re a bit messy and beautiful in their imperfections.
To more work from Christy Kinard, please visit her website and Facebook page. And while you’re doing the Facebook thing, head over to the Artsy Forager page to check out Christy’s cover art and an album of some of my personal favorites from her portfolio!
I’ve been reading up on the Abstract Expressionists lately and have found myself completely enraptured by the movement and the entire era. Working intuitively, many abstract artists set out without a clue as to where their composition will ultimately end up. The work is an extension of who they are in that moment in time– a big part of what fascinates me about abstract work and abstract expressionism. In the work of Heather Chontos, I see much of that same intuitiveness and freedom.
Heather made a name for herself in the world of fashion publications, styling and set designing for the likes of Barneys & Anthropologie. And in these abstract works, there carries over that sense of composition, you can almost see her rearranging her shapes and lines on each canvas, much in the same way she might stage & style for a shoot– moving things around until it feels just right. She isn’t afraid to let us in on that process, too. Smudges in charcoal and paint let us know where perhaps she switched out one shape or line for another.
Of course, there is beauty in the slick and perfectly painted canvas– but often being able to let go of our need for perfection and allow ourselves to be vulnerable as artists is a deeper challenge. It is an act of truly putting yourself out there, there is no hiding, you are laid out on canvas for all the world to see. Completely scary, for sure, but amazingly liberating, too.
One of my own resolutions goals for 2014 is to get serious about painting again. I’ll be starting a little daily exercise over on Instagram ( come follow along! ) and will share more on that later this week. It’s a daunting prospect, especially as I hope to be busy with freelance work too, this year, but my heart is longing for it. Artists like Heather are reminding me that the work isn’t always about the result but about learning from the process.
We all want to present ourselves in the best way possible. But with the infiltration of social media into every aspect of our lives, its tempting to cross the line over from putting our best foot forward to presenting an inauthentic picture of who we are. In his work, artist Tristan Pigott examines our habits of self-projection and the superficiality we often perpetuate.
His compositions employ fashion models in the place of “ordinary” people, to further enforce the notion of the fronts and facades we create for ourselves. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of wanting every photo we post to be beautiful, to encite envy among our social media followers and to lead them to believe we live a life to which they should aspire. And maybe we do in some ways. But in other respects, each life is filled with the same sorts of gunk and uncomfortable human stuff that we are all too often so very careful to edit out. How many photos have you seen this holiday season of burnt cookies? Or a child in mid-meltdown because Santa didn’t bring exactly what he asked for? Not many, I’m guessing. I certainly didn’t post the photos of the burnt Honey Rosemary Pecans I made or my non-made up face upon waking first thing Christmas morning.
Why? Because I’m chicken. I don’t want the world to see the dark circles under my eyes or to know that I occasionally leave food in the oven just a bit too long. ( Oops guess now you know my secret! ). Like everyone else, I want the world to see my life as beautiful. But here’s the thing. Every life IS beautiful. Filled with beauty. It may not be magazine spread perfect, but each and every one of our lives is full of moments that take our breath away, that make us laugh and yes, make us mad or embarrassed. But what makes our lives the beautiful messes that they are is embracing the imperfectness, being able to laugh with and at ourselves. Letting people into our beautiful mess.
Many of you may be on the road as I type this, on your way home after much holiday merriment. Isn’t it interesting how much different the landscape looks from a car? I remember being fascinated by the blur of grass and trees seen from my backseat window as a girl. Even when half asleep after a long day, my young mind could still tell just by the timing and turning of corners when we were almost home. Long Island artist Grant Haffner captures his love of his own hometown roads in his tender, colorful paintings.
In these acrylic paintings, Haffner beautifully captures that feeling of being on the road, the whizzing blur of color, the towering power lines, the never-ending expanse of sky. Sure, air travel may be faster, but a road trip offers so much more in the way of adventure and discovery. There could always be some hidden potential just around the next corner, just over that hill. Haffner’s paintings capture that sense of excitement and anticipation and their lack of cars and people give the viewer a through-the-windshield feeling of being that sole traveler indulging their wanderlust.
To see more of Grant Haffner‘s work, please visit his website. Our journey from Florida to Washington three years ago is among my best road trip memories. Do you have a favorite?
