If you’ve been following along my own little artistic journey, then you already know I’ve been a bit obsessed with color lately. Color has an incredible psychological effect on mood and atmosphere and when I saw the work of Chilean born, Berlin based artist Macarena Ruiz Tagle on The Jealous Curator last week, I immediately fell in love.
The series, aptly titled Atmosphere is a collection of works of acrylic and watercolor on paper. Amazing, right?? With their deep, tunnel-like darker center, we are plunged into these worlds of color. As the hue radiates out from the middle, lightening toward the paper’s edges, the fields of color almost seem to be these moving and vibrating auras. These are pieces it may be tempting to just pass by, but with a second look, there is so very much to see.
I don’t know about you, but I could really use an escape right now. To Wonderland, to the Chocolate Factory, to anywhere I don’t have to answer emails, make dinner or otherwise in any way be a grown up! I want to go to a place where no one speaks an unkind word and everyone is insanely happy. Where trouble melts like lemon drops. Truly, what I want is to get lost in the crazy wonderland of Texas artist Kelly O’Connor.
OK, perhaps I take it back. Like the fictional Stepford, O’Connor’s collages of vintage vacation destinations juxtaposed with candy colored geometrics and crazy-eyed mid-century ladies is a bit loopy. But then it’s meant to be. From the artist “My intention is to create an immortal or dreamlike space, such as one that could only exist in a person’s subconscious.” These worlds are like those dreams from which you wake, feeling exhilarated, but relieved that it wasn’t real.
To see more of Kelly O’Connor’s work, please visit her website. If you happen to be near Houston, be sure to check out Kelly’s solo show Blinded by the Light at David Shelton Gallery, up until June 7th! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put on my sparkle ray glasses and get back to work.
If you follow me over on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been a bit obsessed with flowers this spring. Growing up in Florida, we really only had two seasons, summer and not summer. Until we started traveling out West, I’d never really experienced a true Fall, Winter, or Spring. Spring in the Northwest is especially lovely given all the amazingly beautiful blooming trees, shrubs and wildflowers! Ever since my first glimpse of cherry blossom petals littering the Seattle sidewalks, I’ve been smitten by Spring here.
left| cherry blossoms, right| Seattle Sidewalks, acrylic on paper, 18×24
The juxtapositions of colors and textures inspired me to begin a new series on paper, Rain and Rhododendrons. I’m still continuing with the Feminine Wilesseries, but was itching to get back to painting in a larger format and thanks to a nice big pad of Canson Mixed Media Paper, a portable drawing board, and a sturdy travel portfolio gifted to me by Mr. F for my birthday last month, I was ready to dive in.
Forest Blossoms, acrylic on paper, 18×24
Like the Feminine Wiles series, these too are color studies, but I’m enjoying experimenting with a looser style, being able to work much more quickly and freely on larger paper than I’ve been able to ( so far! ) on small panels.
top| Arcata Marsh Wildflowers, acrylic on paper, 18×24, bottom| Allen Pond with wildflowers
I haven’t had dedicated painting time in a few weeks and I am itching to get back in, especially after Mr. F and I took a camping trip this weekend up to the Trinity Alps. I am so full of inspiration for this series, I am about to burst! So there will undoubtedly be more to come, soon.. In the meantime, you can see full shots of each of the pieces I’ve already completed in the Rain and Rhododendrons gallery page. And in case you missed it, there is also a Feminine Wiles gallery page, both under the My Work heading in the top navigation bar. I’ve also added an artist statement and bio on the My Work page– so much harder to write those things for yourself than it is to help others!
Some people dream of a perfect utopian existence. But utopias always seem more Stepford-ish to me, communities where every house looks perfectly the same, every person has the same ideals, there is never any conflict. But where there is no conflict, there is no contrast and it’s in the differences that true life comes through and true beauty shines. The work of Vancouver artist Scott Sueme exposes those contrasts found outside of the perfect.
Sueme uses landscape like compositions mixed with graffiti ideology to reference human interaction within nature. Whether it be from overdevelopment filled with strip malls or a small cabin in the woods, landscape is different and loses its sense of balance and perfection once the hand of man has been laid upon it. It’s hard to imagine a world without street lights and signs and parking lots. Would we even recognize it?
One of the things that draws me again and again to abstract work is its ambiguity. We can never know for certain the source of the artist’s inspiration and every viewer carries to the work their own interpretation. The work of Irish Australian based artist Michael Cusack uses a consistent language of simple shapes and fields of white, each piece leaving us to determine exactly what it is we see.
For each viewer, the reality of what they see is unique. In viewing and living with abstract work like Cusack’s, we find ourselves on a quest to determine the truth of what we see. But we all look at each work through our own goggles of perception. Our experiences, memories and associations color our interpretation, giving these kinds of works a universal veracity unique to each viewer.
Something about the warmer months make me long for the exotic. Maybe it’s childhood conditioning bringing on dreams of summer vacations to faraway places! I’ve always loved the work of Jill Ricci for her brilliant way of combining exotic motifs with pop art and urban graphics and her mixed media piece, Roam, perfectly inspires an urban globetrotter ensemble! This Mintzita Maxi Dress from Anthropologie embodies a free spirited, exotic traveler type.
How to make it just a tad more Ricci? Edge up the dress’s sweetness with a moto jacket and Chuck Taylors and suddenly it’s like you are living it up Ricci-style. Roam, if you want to. 😉
See more of the Wear the Artsy series in the archives!
I’m finding so much to inspire and aspire to in the work of other artists lately, especially in the way abstract artists approach composition and color. How some artists choose to include graphic or narrative elements eluding to a certain subject or influence, while others, like Emily Crabtree, simply let color and form do the talking.
I love the way her work twirls and drips in cottony bundles of color. In these paper pieces, the forms isolated against a clean white background, almost seem to pulsate and dare to flit about the surface. Peeking in from this side or that, the cropped compositions feel like a fleeting glimpse of clouds of color floating in and out of view.
Perhaps this is sacriledgious type talk, but I’ve never been a fan of the Wizard of Oz. I just never really connected with it. But I do love me some Judy Garland. Meet Me in St. Louis? Easter Parade? I’ll take those over flying monkeys any day! When it came time to think about an iconic Garland role to do a color study of for the Feminine Wiles series, A Star is Born‘s Vicki Lester seemed the quintessential choice.
In Lester’s rise to fame and the effects of her success on her marriage, we see a story of drive, devotion, self-sacrifice, and desolation. A sweeping melodrama filled with mountainous highs and the deepest of lows, it made sense for costume designers Jean Louis and Mary Ann Nyberg to dress Garland’s Vicki in moody lavenders, blues, and greys.
Judy Garland as Vicki Lester in A Star is Born, acrylic on canvas panel, 6×6
If you’d like to see more in the Feminine Wiles series, check out the archives! Gathering up inspiration for some more to come! Do you have a favorite you’d like to see me tackle? Let me know in the comments below!
All film image sources linked above. Art by Lesley Frenz aka Artsy Forager.
Some of my art experiences here in Eureka have been of the “iceberg tip” kind. I discover artists by seeing work in person that is a bit interesting, then upon further online investigation, discover that there is so much more. San Diego artist Jessica McCambly, whose work I saw recently at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, works in the very nature of a first glance drawn into an intimate viewing.
McCambly creates these tiny paintings ( the larger pieces pictured above are zoomed in details, most work is on 7×7 or 10×10 paper ) using a unique mixture of acrylic and glass fragments. The resulting paintings are these beautiful little jeweled microcosms. They could be geodes or macro images of crystals, or aerial views of geothermal pools. There is a quality of a world to be discovered in each minute piece, drawing us in for a closer view.
When you think about it, our entire world, every organism, every object is composed of a system of layers. Artwork included, especially the work of process driven artist Pam Saturday. Employing layer upon layer of paint and other media, the artist creates a universe in which we see only a fraction of reality.
Bold stripes and other forms may dominate, but for the close observer, there are small glimpses and surprises waiting to be discovered. Colors peek and peer from beneath their blankets of paint and we have no idea how much there is to be unearthed.
