December is here! Mr. F and I are back living in Idaho ( Moscow, ID to be exact ) for the next three months. As we were driving up, we were treated to a spectacular display of snow juxtaposed against the evergreens, rocks and rushing waters. These pieces by this month’s Featured Artist, Casey Matthews remind me of that wintery palette I love so much.
I’ve been in love with Casey’s work for a long time and she was one of the first artists I featured on Artsy Forager. Her work is full of luscious texture and lots of delicious little details that don’t always come through in digital form. Orbs and circles are a large part of her visual language and some of her latest work, she’s exploring a whirlpoolish composition in addition to her characteristic floating shapes and drips. And I’m especially enamored of the way she is overlaying linear elements, adding yet another intriguing dimension.
Casey lives in North Florida, so its pretty doubtful that her inspiration would have come from the snow and evergreens of Northern Idaho. Yet these pieces have much of the atmospheric feel I was imagining as we drove through snow covered canyons and delighted in patches of white dotting the rocks along the river. Isn’t it amazing how an artist’s work can resonate your own imagination?
If you’d like to see Casey’s work in person, you can do so at a number of representing galleries, a list can be found here. If you’re in North Florida, Casey will be showing work at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club during the month of December, with a holiday reception on December 12th. Or if you happen to be in the Atlanta area, her work will be a part of the annual Masterpiece & Its Minis show at Gregg Irby Fine Art, where you could snatch up a sweet smaller Casey Matthews original, what an amazing gift one would make!
Mr. Forager and I are spending this week celebrating Thanksgiving, so I decided to show my thanks to this month’s Featured Artist by re-running a few of her previous posts! This feature first ran in July 2012. This was before I started calling my husband George Mr. Forager here on the blog, in case you’re wondering who I’m going on about. 😉 Enjoy!
Welcome to Day 2 of our Artists Takeover Event! Today’s artist is the only Canuck in the bunch this week, Vancouver artist M.A. Tateishi. M.A. is an artist whose work I immediately connected with and the artist herself has become a great supporter and friend. Our conversation gives you a little behind-the-scenes peek at Artsy Forager!
The Walls of This Old House, mixed media with resin, 36×48
M.A. Tateishi | You feature a lot of inspiring and different artists. How do you find the artists, and is there a particular reaction you have to art when you find it…like an immediate fall-in-love feeling, or does some work grow on you? Do you have to sort through a lot of “bad art” to find the good ones?
Artsy Forager | I find the artists I feature through a number of different avenues– some I’ve known through working in the industry, others I’ve found through galleries ( both visited in person & online ), social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, through other artists, through other art blogs, lifestyle blogs, even some DIY, fashion & home decor blogs will occasionally feature interesting artwork. Really just keeping my eyes open at all times. I try to always have a pen & paper handy, as you never know when you may happen upon something amazing! The reaction is a little like falling in love or at the very least having a crush! My heart will skip a beat and many times my mouth will drop open. 😉 I’ve been told I have a “great eye” and my husband used to always ask how I knew really great work from mediocre– it’s hard to describe, it’s more of an artistic intuition, I guess. It’s funny, but many of the sources through which I find work are so full of great stuff that I don’t really have to sift through much “bad art”. I do get emails from artists whose work doesn’t quite make the cut for Artsy Forager, though. I always want to be encouraging to anyone who is willing to reach out and ask to be featured, but I strive very hard to keep the standard of work featured high. If I do need to “reject” an artist, I try to offer other avenues for online exposure.
Pixelated Rhythm, mixed media with resin, 36×48
MAT | How do you organize your writing? Do you have a lot of posts ready to go, or do you work on deadlines? Do you have an editor/friend to bounce things off, or do you work alone? And how to you manage all your social media? Are you typing away on your iPhone while you’re waiting at the post office?
AF | I plan out Artsy Forager posts usually no more than a week or two ahead. I’m a bit of a procrastinator by nature, something I’m trying to work on, so right now, that’s about as far out as I can plan & organize for the posts themselves. Since I post to the blog Monday-Friday and my husband’s schedule can change, I’m sometimes writing & scheduling posts in advance for the days when he is off. For instance, he’s currently working Wed-Sun, so I make sure to have all my posts completed and scheduled for Monday & Tuesday by Sunday night, so that we can enjoy time together without too much distraction. I normally work alone, but will sometimes bounce ideas off fellow bloggers, artists and of course, my hubby is always a ready ear. I’m still learning to smartly manage social media.. I finally signed up for Hoot Suite, which allows me to advance schedule posts to social media and has gone a long way toward helping me maintain an online presence even when I may not be physically near a computer. 😉 You may be surprised to learn that I don’t have an iPhone or even internet access on my cell phone and right now the hubby and I share one MacBook Pro between us. It can make keeping up more difficult, but it also helps to be able to disconnect when spending time with my hubby.
Neon City, mixed media with resin, 36×48
MAT | Finally, what motivates you to do the Artsy Forager? As an artist I can see the benefits for me, and I think it’s important to bring original art to as many people as possible, but I was wondering what inspires you?
AF | This is a really interesting question and one I’m sure many artists are curious about. I began Artsy Forager when I left a long time gallery/ art consultation position and was preparing to leave Florida to begin traveling the Northwest with George. I knew that I would be bored without something to occupy my time while George was working and getting a different job in a new town every 3 months didn’t seem appealing or even possible. I thought about what I’d loved the most about my former position, what really excited and motivated me– it was the artists themselves and their work. I’ve always loved writing, I was almost a Lit major before switching to Art History and I thought blogging would be an interesting way to fuel my passion for art, help artists succeed in whatever way I could and allow me to build and create something of my own. What really inspires me is the relationships I’m building with artists from all over the country. When artists come to me for advice, I am honored, humbled and inspired to do more of whatever I can to help them succeed. Who knows where Artsy Forager may lead in the next few years. I hope it leads to greater success, not just for me, but for every artist featured.
Champagne Pop, mixed media with resin, 24×36
To see more of M.A.’s work, please visit her website. Taking over tomorrow: Christina Baker!
Mr. Forager and I are spending this week celebrating Thanksgiving, so I decided to show my thanks to this month’s Featured Artist by re-running a few of her previous posts! This feature first ran in November 2011. Enjoy!
Many artists will paint multiple paintings on the same canvas, one on top of the other. But while most are painting over work that they’ve tired of or that was unsatisfactory, Vancouver artist M.A. Tateishi, layers her paintings in order to later reveal what is hidden underneath.
Pink Is The Navy Blue Of India, mixed media and resin on board, 36×48
In her Excavations series, she layers 10 to 20 underpaintings onto her panel, then begins her process of excavation to reveal the varied surfaces underneath. A final coat of resin seals the surface and enhances the visual depth of each work.
Neon City, mixed media with resin, 36×48
To me, there is something really beautiful and moving about work that utilizes this process of selective revelation. After the artist has created a visual history, to then go back and unearth those hidden gems must be a bit like the excitement of opening gifts on Christmas mornings. Oh, what treasures may be found! What happy surprises lurk just beneath the surface!
Spiral Joy, mixed media on panel, 36×36
M.A.’s Transparency Series offers an even more fluid experience of each work’s visual history, as each layer is transparent and clearly visible in the finished work, as well as the underlayer of the wood panel, adding a wonderful organic texture against the pops of bright color.
Fire Snake, mixed media on panel, 40×40Free Bird, mixed media and resin on board, 36×48
M.A. once told me that she often feels like a piece isn’t complete without a little touch of pink. This is an artist that definitely embraces the power of pink and isn’t afraid to unearth what is hidden.
To see more of M.A.’s revealing work, check out her website and Facebook page. If you happen to be in the Vancouver, BC area, MA Tateishi will be participating in the Eastside Culture Crawl this weekend. See her website for more details!
Featured image is Thrush Song, mixed media on panel, 36×36. All images are via that artist’s website.
Light has an amazing way of transforming shapes, creating shadows and distorting forms. In her Fractal Facet paintings, Toronto artist Catto Houghton continues using her signature geometric chards to create abstract compositions filled with movement and light.
Prismatic shapes dance around her canvases, just as light bounces across a room. She’s exploring the character of light– how it moves and gives shape to the objects it illuminates and by keeping the compositions abstract, we’re able to concentrate on the forms, colors, and shifts. The work has a gem-like quality, with nods to Art Deco shapes and futuristic worlds. What we see depends entirely on how we interpret the artist’s use of color, shape and light. I don’t know about you, but I see some disco dancing goin’ on.
We are in the land of the giants today. Today’s plan includes seeing a bit more of the Redwoods and driving through a tree! I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw a photo of the Chandelier Tree many moons ago. These enormous trees, the huge haystack rocks in Oregon and just the wildness of the Pacific remind us of how very small we are in this large universe. In his bas relief sculptures, Dutch artist Ron van der Ende uses found wood to sculpt and “paint” his own colossal objects.
Bas-relief sculpture is all about angles and perception. When viewed from one angle, the sculpture may not make sense, but when taken in from the front, it seems to float in true 3-dimensional form. As van der Ende is creating his pieces, he uses pieces of painted found wood to create the colors you see– these aren’t sculptures constructed, then painted. The artist is painting with the found wood. Using the existing finishes of the wood in such a way creates a wonderful sense of texture, which only serves to amplify the depth created by the bas-relief technique.
I hope those last two images give you a sense of the enormity of scale van der Ende employs, making these sculptures as imposing as they are impressive, just like our friends the Redwoods.
It’s funny how the shorter days of winter effect our psyche. Less daylight has us longing to curl up and hibernate until the spring. When the sun is out and shining, we turn our faces toward it, soaking up every precious ounce that we can. For artist Elise Morris, seeking and finding the light is a part of her process, resulting in paintings that are positively luminous.
In Morris’s paintings, the light fairly flutters across the canvas, darting in and out of the shadows like a firefly. Those flickers of light shine through to give her paintings the magic of light being filtered through a forest canopy– alluring and glowing, giving us reassurance that the light will find its way through the darkness.
The snow is beginning to fall in the upper elevations on the Olympic Mountains here in Washington. Something about the steep crags covered in snow melts my heart and captures by soul every time I see it. I love that Mr. F always points it out to me, when the snow begins to appear, to make sure I don’t miss it. In her woodblock prints, Melbourne artist Ellie Malin reduces the mountainous landscape to their most simple pointed forms.
The way she uses opaque and translucent shapes to echo the varying planes of the mountains captures the mysterious layers perfectly. These prints make me want to hike through each canyon and over each peak! There is always something about breaking forms down to their very simplest shapes and planes that I find so satisfying.
I’m a firm believer that art is not just about what the artist makes, but what you take from it. Living the Artsy isn’t just about living with art, but living out art each day in our lives. One of the things I love most about the work of this month’s Featured Artist M.A. Tateishi is how bright and downright audacious it is. This artist is not afraid to use color, to deconstruct and then resurrect her surfaces, all resulting in work that inspires me to be move forward as bravely as she does.
I thought perhaps you could use a bit of artsy inspiration, too, so in the words of Simon de Pury..
I’ve been finding things in life to be a bit daunting lately, but just looking at M.A.’s work and putting together this post, thinking about these women that I look up to, who are so much braver than me, I feel empowered and encouraged. I hope you do, too.
I’ve always been fascinated by the way our minds inform our eyes. How our brains connect the proverbial dots to tell us that when we see certain shapes configured this way or that, we’re seeing three dimensional planes out of what is actually two dimensional surface. In the abstract paintings of artist Agnes Barley, we see that by placing certain shapes against one another just so, the illusion of three dimensional space is created.
Her shapes twist and turn and create shadows of themselves upon the painted surface, further reinforcing the dimensionality of the forms. The objects created by putting these pieces together feel so architectural, they seem as if they could be studies for structures or sculpture. I kind of want to climb on one and sit atop it, taking in the view.
I’m always fascinated by artists who find inspiration in nature. What excites me even more is coming across an artist who interprets organic forms into work that is decidedly modern. Brooklyn artist Pamela Sunday creates contemporary ceramic sculptures that nod to the biological forms found all around and inside us.
Out of clay, the artist sculpts these magnificently strong yet delicate forms, so much like the environmental elements from which they take their inspiration. Our bodies and the nature around us can withstand so much, but we still have to keep reminding ourselves that each body, each habitat has its own tipping point. Life really is such a precarious balance, isn’t it?
