artsy forager

Category: Paintings

  • October Facebook Featured Artist: Margie Livingston

    October Facebook Featured Artist: Margie Livingston

    If you are a painter, you no doubt know the joy of gazing upon piles of paint freshly squeezed from their tubes.  Perhaps you’ve admired the loveliness to be found on your palette after a day of painting, when the colors have mixed together in a riotous symphony.  The work of this month’s Facebook Featured Artist, Seattle’s Margie Livingston straddles the worlds of painting and sculpture, in which the paint becomes sculpture.

    Painting Folded Into a Square, acrylic, 20x20x4

    Using paint both as medium and subject, Livingston’s work transforms what is normally a two-dimensional vehicle into one that exists in three-dimensions.  No longer content to merely represent an image of an object, the paint actually takes on an object’s shape.

    Plank, acrylic, 97 5/8 x 1 5/8 x 3 1/2
    Coiled Layered Strip, acrylic, 9x9x3
    Negative Cube, acrylic, 8x14x14

    Margie’s Painted Objects has taken center stage at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle ( supported in part by a 4Culture Individual Artist Project Grant and a CityArtist Project grant from the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture ) and will be on exhibit through November 10th.  Go see it!!  I’ll be far away in California, so I can’t go, which means you MUST!

    To see more of Margie Livingston’s incredible painted sculptures, please visit her website and be sure to check out her gorgeous cover image and album on the Artsy Forager Facebook page.

    Featured image is 90 Color Test, acrylic and grommets, 90 squares at 8×8 each, 78×96 overall.  All images are via the artist’s website and the website of Greg Kucera Gallery.

  • Friday Finds: Word Up!

    Friday Finds: Word Up!

    Happy Friday, Artsies!  Please forgive my 1980s one-hit-wonder reference.  I can’t help it.  My mind just automatically defaults to songs from my teen years.  It seems like the written word is experiencing an artsy renaissance of late.  Not since the days of illuminated manuscripts have words and art become so intertwined.  Here are a few of the wordy works I’m loving this week!

    Why Can’t You Just be Nice by Trey Speegle
    Everything in its Place by David McLeod
    FS2679 by Cecil Touchon
    Thought & Pleasure by Squeak Carnwath
    Sounds Like Some Hippy Shit by Dwayne Butcher

    Trey Speegle | David McLeod | Cecil Touchon | Squeak Carnwath | Dwayne Butcher

    Have a great weekend, Artsies!  Remember to use your words. 😉

    All images are via the artists’ websites, linked above.

  • Abject Extraction: Jen Garrido

    Abject Extraction: Jen Garrido

    For many artists, the act of creation isn’t just about projecting an image onto a canvas.  Artists like Jen Garrido understand that often, it’s more about pulling a hidden entity out of the mist.

    From the Rock #7

    Garrido’s images straddle the line between abstraction and representation, which creates a beautiful tension in her work.  With their stark and white, yet heavily textured backgrounds, the colors and lines feel like the emergence of spring after a long winter.

    Buckle, oil on panel, 12×12
    Birdhole A, oil on panel, 8×8

    The way she molds shapes and textures together leave her paintings with a sculptural quality, bringing them to life in a way that makes them seem almost alive.

    From the Rock #10, oil on panel, 12×12

    To see more of Jen Garrido’s work, be sure to check out her website.

    Artist found via Anthropologie.  All images are via the artist’s website.

  • Outsider Beauty: Margaret Bowland

    Outsider Beauty: Margaret Bowland

    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 48
    Portrait 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.

    Artist found via Artist A Day.  All images are via the artist’s website.

  • Delicate Punk: Susan Carter Hall

    Delicate Punk: Susan Carter Hall

    I’m going to kind of tell my age with this post.. I’m a child of the 80s.  There, my secret is out.  I remember all too well the punk movement– the mixing of Victorian-inspired lace with torn fishnets and combat boots.  The latest work of Los Angeles artist Susan Carter Hall reminds me of those bad-a$$ chicks this good girl could never be, like totally.

    Circus, oil on canvas, 32×36

    Her soft palette and supple forms are punctuated with areas of darkness, lending a little hard-edge to what otherwise might feel overtly feminine.

    Earth No. 1, oil on canvas, 24×24
    Bridge, oil on gessoed paper, 25×40

    Those punches of black and the slash-dash expression of color make Hall’s work bodaciously rad. Ok, enough of the bad 80s lingo.  Her work just rocks.  Period.

    Earth No. 2, oil on canvas

    To see more of Susan Carter Hall’s work, please check out her website and to keep up with her latest work & shows, be sure to like her Facebook page.

    All images are via the artist’s website.

  • Painted Ponies: Karen Keene Day

    Painted Ponies: Karen Keene Day

    I’ve never been one of those horse-crazy girls.  You know the ones.  Oh, I read my share of Black Beauty and The Black Stallion when I was young, but I just never caught the equestrian obsession.  But we have been knee-deep in horse country here in Idaho and after seeing these creatures everyday, I can now understand the fascination.  In her paintings, artist Karen Keene Day perfectly captures the untamed beauty and spirit of American wild horses.

    Moments with Wild Horses 79, 24×24

    Powerful yet gentle and graceful, the horse often serves dutifully yet you can see in their eyes the longing to run free.

    Moments with Wild Horses 81, 12×12
    Moments with Wild Horses 116, 48×60

    Through her use of simple painted line drawing juxtaposed with slashes of vibrant color, Day translates into her work the innate wildness of the animals and unique personality each one displays.

    Moments with Wild Horses 84, 8×8

    To see more of Karen Keene Day’s work, please visit her website.  The artist supports the work being done to keep wild horses safe by donating 3% of her commission on each sale to the National Mustang Association branch in Cortez, CO.

    PS– If you’ve never seen the documentary Wild Horses & Renegades, I highly recommend it!

    Artist found via Michael Mitchell Gallery.  All images are via the artist’s website.

  • Friday Finds: Anthropomorphically Artsy

    Friday Finds: Anthropomorphically Artsy

    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 Frizell
    Beyond the Menagerie by Kareena Zerefos
    Renard by Charlotte Caron
    Sabrina Hornung

    Nate Frizzel | Kareena Zerefos | Charlotte Caron | Sabrina 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.

  • Toast of the Town: Grant Schexnider

    Toast of the Town: Grant Schexnider

    Few places in the US hold our fascination like New Orleans does.  It’s heady dose of hard partying, spirituality and historic charm completely enchants us.  Chicago artist Grant Schexnider ‘s work addresses the iconography of New Orleans and the bayou with bold strokes and a seemingly carefree style, much like NOLA itself.

    Sazaerac, oil on canvas, 36×36
    Old Fashioned, oil on canvas, 36×36

    You can practically hear the jazz horns, taste the andouille, feel the misquitos’ sting.  His palette is rich and warm, like the colors of the city’s weathered buildings and vibrant characters.

    Blue Heron, oil on canvas, 20×20

    Deliberately messy layers remind us of a city that doesn’t take itself too seriously in spite of its history of hardship.  The cheerful resilience of the people of New Orleans may be captured in the warmth of Schexnider’s palette.

    Blue Shotgun, oil on canvas, 18×36
    Shotgun 2b, oil on canvas

    To see more of Grant Schexnider’s work, please visit his website.

    All images are via the artist’s website and the website of his representing NOLA gallery, Gallery Orange.

  • Artsy on Escape Into Life: Kristine Moran

    Lush color and luminosity?  What could be better!  Head over to Escape Into Life to check out this week’s Artist Watch on New York artist Kristine Moran.

    Slow Wave 2 by Kristine Moran, oil on canvas, 54×60

    Kristine Moran on Escape Into Life

  • Face Paint: Greg Hart

    Face Paint: Greg Hart

    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, 15×22
    Bygone, 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.