Encaustic painting is a favorite medium of mine. Their waxy, frosting-like texture sends me over the moon. Every time I’m in a gallery, I will be drawn to the encaustics, guaranteed. So for this Friday round-up, I’m sharing with you some of my favorite waxy painters.
Why Stream Upstream by Mary Farmer, encaustic on canvas, 40×40
Whirl #1 by Wendy Franklund Miller, encaustic on wood, 12×12
Interplay by Nancy Natale, encaustic with fiber, oilstick and oil paint on birch, 24×24
Do you have any favorite encaustic artists I should know about? Do tell! To see more work from these fabulous encaustic artists, please visit their websites.
Featured image is Crossroads by Nancy Natale. All images are courtesy of the artist’s websites.
PS– As the hubby and I prepare to move from Aberdeen to his new assignment in Grants Pass, OR AND enjoy some camping and a visit from my mom-in-law, Artsy Forager will be rerunning some older posts over the next two weeks. Hopefully, this will give new readers a chance to see some artists that were featured back when the only people reading were my family and friends. 🙂
So many times when we think of paintings, it brings to mind mostly oils and acrylics. But there are a few artists out there who are creating artwork on canvas utilizing a medium usually reserved for more prosaic pursuits– like making out grocery lists. Artists like Joan Salo are creating large scale artwork using pens.
These aren’t your traditional pen and ink drawings. These are pen-drawn abstract paintings on canvas, as rich and vibrant as any oil painting. These are like the spirographs we did as kids, taken to a whole new, grown-up level. Vibrant colors, rendered in an organic, yet orderly composition. These paintings have such a sense of movement, they almost seem alive.
Untitled, pen on canvas
Some patterns are creations of color and shape woven together like textiles, creating a plaid-like composition.
Untitled, pen on canvas
While others seem more like representations of wavelengths..
Untitled, pen on canvas
… or call to mind a colorful cave filled with stalactites.
Untitled, pen on canvas
Whatever it is that we see in Salo’s abstract works, she is reminding us that artists have long taken every day tools and used them to create the extraordinary.
To see more of Barcelona artist Joan Salo’s work, please visit her website.
The world as seen from high above is such a simple, orderly place. I still remember the first time I looked out an airplane window and saw the neatly composed patterns of farmland down below. And the rows of surburban homes lined up like so many monopoly houses on cul-de-sacs. The snaking lines of rivers and mountain ranges.
This Friday’s round-up is full of images from artists who also find inspiration in the what can be seen from the sky. Hope you enjoy the view!
The Cummer Museum by Christina FoardFarmland Aerial by Wm. Coleman MillsAerial View by Sally King BenedictPortage Bay by Suzanne DeCuir
1. Christina Foard ( featured image is CSX Storage by Christina Foard )
I love it when an artist’s work causes me to do a double take. When I spotted the ceramic sculptures of Anne Goodrich amongst the work at Guardino Gallery in Portland, I almost passed them by. From afar, they just seemed like botanical ceramics, which would likely just have elicited a “nice” from me. But upon closer inspection, I saw that these were something more.
Wall 10
These beautifully formed ceramics, in their soft pastels and rich earth tones play a delightful little trick on the mind. At first glance, you may think you know what you’re seeing– Oh, pretty seashell, no wait, flower, no wait, gourd.. snail? alien? What is it?!
7A
It is in the ambiguity that Goodrich’s work finds its simple, sweet power. We aren’t sure exactly what these forms are, but even still, they speak to us. They are achingly familiar, like the face of a stranger who reminds us of a long lost friend.
Wall 4
They may remind us of forms that exist inside our own bodies. Or of organisms surrounding us, both seen and unseen.
Nest 1 by Anne Goodrich
Whatever they are, I want to bring one home, give it a name, let it speak to me and discover its mysteries.
To see more of Anne Goodrich’s work, please visit her website. If you’re lucky enough to be in or near Portland, OR, you can see her work in person at Guardino Gallery in the Alberta Arts District.
The mixed media work of artist Steven DaLuz glows with an ethereal luminosity. His atmospheric work explores the use of light to create ambience, whether it is a hazy and serene or deeply dramatic.
Threshold, mixed media on panel, 48×60
The self-described “Neo-Luminst” is creating work that is “concerned with the glowing effects of light”. Instead of creating work with an inherent message or narrative, DaLuz instead prefers to let the emotionality of the light and color in his work allow the viewer to draw on their own perception and experience to invoke meaning. Or to simply allow the imagery to speak for itself.
Opus 110, oil on metal leaf on birch, 48×48
For me, these seem to be rare glimpses into another world. These are transcendent, the light, texture and composition all joining together to transport the viewer into a world that may or may not exist within our realm of experience.
Ovum 2, oil and mixed media on panel, 36×36
What one viewer may see as delicate and heavenly, another may view as foreboding and alien. Or, like me, you may be drawn to the richness of color and elegance of the composition, which is enough to spark my own imagination.
Portal, oil and mixed media on panel, 36×48
To see more of this artist’s work, please visit his website or stop by his Facebook page.
Featured image is Cloud Bank by Steven DaLuz. All images are courtesy of the artist’s website.
Normally, I love thick paintings. Canvases piled high with mounds of paint and lots of gooey and delicious texture. But there is a fluidity in abstract watercolors that I find just as appealing. Watercolorist Marsha Boston imbues her work with such a lovely sense of light and tranquil color, they feel like looking at the world from under a blanket of warm water as the sun shines above.
Saucer Magnolia, watercolor and ink
Her botanical work focuses on our relationship with nature, our power over it in areas such as genetic engineering and nano-agriculture. How easy it seems to be for man to take for granted and ultimately destroy the delicate balance that is inherent in the natural world, all for our own purposes.
Leaf Mutants in Pea, acrylic on canvas
Her Remembering Water series stemmed from the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill, spawning an interest in aqueous plants and their usefulness and value in our ecosystem. When oil spills occur, much is made of the impact on animal life, but the harm to plants and microorganisms that sustain them is rarely highlighted.
Widgeon Grass, Remembering Water series, acylic on canvasOculina, Remembering Water series, watercolor on Fabriano
I love art for art’s sake and pretty pictures as much as the next girl. But do you know what I love even more? Beautiful artwork that tells an important story. And that’s what Marsha Boston’s work does. It is telling us the story of the destruction and misuse of the very resources that are here to not only sustain us but give us pleasure. It would be a sad day if there were no more wildflowers to inspire artists like Boston to capture their beauty.
Mountain Cranberry, watercolor and ink
To see more of Marsha Boston’s work, please visit her website and Facebook page.
Featured image is Indian Fig, watercolor and ink by Marsha Boston. All images are courtesy of the artist’s website.
Addendum: If you like Deb Haugen’s work, prints will be available via One King’s Lane beginning August 5, 2011.
Organic is a hot word these days. It’s everywhere in the grocery store, pharmacy, heck just googling “organic” yields 430,000,000 hits. When most of us hear the word today, we think of pesticide-free, naturally grown food. Just as the organic food we eat is allowed to develop naturally, so is the Organic Art of Deb Haugen.
Butterballs
Deb sees the world through the fundamentals of nature, those microcosmic worlds that are happening unseen right before our very eyes. She is using her paints intuitively, creating not a visual representation of the reality of the appearance of nature, but rather the emotionality of our response to the natural world around us.
La Lumiere de Vie
The artist’s response to those “atmospheric memories” is sketched out on paper and canvas in loose, biomorphic shapes that float within a watery universe. These are the painterly representations of the feeling of dipping your toes into a frigid, running river, the scent of the woods after a summer rainfall, the movement of a snail along the forest floor.
Organic Mama by Deb Haugen
As one who does a lot of looking down while hiking ( serious klutz, party of one ), many of Deb’s paintings remind me of the intricate story that is being told beneath our feet. There is so much to witness, if we would only take the time to stop and notice, truly experience the miracles taking place all around.
She’s So Complex
Don’t just make due with eating organic food. See with organic eyes. Really get to know the natural world around you, even in your own backyard. There are stories it would like to tell you and wonders to show you, if you would only stop, look and listen.
If you’d like to see more of Deb Haugen’s work, check out her website, The Organic Artist.
We are headed to Seattle this weekend, one of my favorite cities in the world, the city where George and I fell in love. And while I was falling in love with G ( I was probably a little in love with him when we were friends in FL, but that’s a story for another time ), I was also falling in love with Seattle. I adore visiting cool cities– the urban landscape and architecture fascinates me. So it carries over that I would adore the art of the cityscape.
For this Friday Fave round-up, I’d like to share some of urbanist artists whose work I’m crushing on lately:
Hill Houses 2 by Brin LevinsonPassing 1 by Jason WebbSolitary I by John DuckworthLoew’s Hotel, 33rd Floor, Philadelphia by Sara YeomanMiyami by Darra CrosbyGreat Tortoise Hostel, Seattle by Robin WeissBoulevard Windows by Sharon Dowell
Looking forward to bringing you more from these artists soon! In the meantime, take a gander at their websites..
Pablo Picasso once asked ( rhetorically, of course ), “Why do two colors, one put next to the other, sing?” Good ol’ Pablo had no answer, nor do I. But they do. Color calls out to us, reaches out to something in our spirit and psyche, evoking emotion. Not every artist gets color, how different hues complement and interact with each other. Michelle Armas gets it. She gets it and puts it on canvas for all the world to see and enjoy.
Sophia
Michelle began professional life, not as an artist, but in graphic design and corporate branding in New York. Talk about baptism by fire! To help cope with the stress of working in NYC, Michelle began painting. After about a year, she decided to trade the corporate world for the art world and began painting full-time.
Rosalia
Her canvases explode with color, joyous, juicy and fluid. It’s as if she’s captured the hues of the warmth of a sunny day, of being a kid again, running and jumping with full abandon.
Arelis
Lovely, sketchy scribbles and seemingly-spontaneous pops of color remind us what it was like before we were “taught” to draw and color– that magical time when we, as young children, were only concerned with the feel of the crayon on paper, fascinated by the variety in our Crayola 64. We weren’t trying to create anything.. we were just completely submerged in the process of creating.
Spooky
Filled with the colors of poppies and popsicles, sundaes and springtime, her work does sing. Sappy, happy love songs, you know, the ones that we all know the words to. Because we recognize this artist’s vocabulary– these are stories of pure color, that speak to the very basic of creative instincts that began deep within all of us. They sing us a sparkling lullaby as we bask in their sunshine, dreaming of coloring in the clouds.
To see more of Michelle Armas’ work, check out her website and be sure to stop by her blog. Her writing style is as cheeky and colorful as her paintings.
I love art. I love design. Why not put the two together on the blog? There was a time in my life when I thought my career path lay ( Thank you, Suzanne Decuir for the grammatical help ) in Interior Design. I took courses, devoured design and shelter magazines. As often happens in life, circumstances got in the way and the path detoured. But that’s a story for another time. Let’s focus on the fun stuff today!
One of my absolute favorite things while designing ( OK, it was THE absolute favorite thing ), was creating moodboards. To begin with an inspiration and build a room or facility around it was thrilling to my color, texture and pattern lovin’ soul. And for me, it always began with the artwork. While doing project management/art consulting, I worked with a lot of designers and many ( but by no means all! ) viewed the artwork for a design as an after-thought. Like adding sprinkles to a cake. Still a cake without the sprinkles, but oh, if we add them, won’t that be pretty! But if we don’t have sprinkles, it’s OK. It’s still a nice cake. Instead, I think of the artwork as the frosting– not just smoothed across the top, but spread between the layers and all over. It is what holds the cake together and gives it the extra texture and sweetness that keeps us going back for more.
( Wow, anyone else craving cake now? )
So you’ve purchased this beautiful painting by Christina Foard. You love it, it speaks to your heart and reflects your style and everything you love about life. But maybe you live at the beach and are unsure how to design a room around it. Aren’t all beach houses supposed to be full of palm trees & seashells?
Seaside Reflections by Christina Foard, oil on canvas, 60×48
This piece to speak more to the feeling of being on the beach just after a storm, while the skies are still a bit gray but the sun is beginning to peek through, warming up the sand to both the eye and the touch. So let’s take our cue from that and begin with soft, grayish tones, layering on the warmth of the sun in our accent chair, rug and window coverings. An important component in Christina’s work is texture, so we’ll make sure there are plenty of interesting surfaces to draw our eyes in, just as Christina’s painterly build up does in her work.
Modern Reflections, a beachside home for a contemporary art lover
Have you ever designed a room around a piece of artwork? Or bought a piece of artwork not knowing where exactly to hang it in your home but you couldn’t live without it? Have a beloved piece of art sitting in a closet somewhere because you don’t think it “goes” or can’t figure out how to incorporate it with your current furnishings? Um, yeah, me too. 🙂
