Skip to content

About
- Find the Forager
My Work
Contact

Tag: abstract art

Wayfinding. Windy O’Connor.

Have you ever been lost in the woods? Mr. F and I have. It rarely happens to us, but on a hike in Northern California’s Trinity Alps last summer, we chose what turned out to be a very poorly marked trail. We found ourselves wandering from one point to another, backtracking, trying to pinpoint where we’d diverged from our path. These paintings by Charlotte artist Windy O’Connor remind me of colorful wanderings across the canvas.

Just as we struggled to find our way back to our beginning, I love that these vibrant trails seem to have no end and no beginning. They loop all over the canvas like the never ending scarf a magician pulls from his tuxedo sleeve. One color finds its way into, over, under another. What a wonderful way to get lost!

To see more of Windy O’Connor’s work, please visit her website.

All images are via the gallery of the artist’s representing gallery, Hidell Brooks.

April 29, 2015
Screen Tests. Matthew Penkala.

I recently went through a harrowing experience. I fell ( that’s not the harrowing part- kind of par for my course these days ) and took my smart phone down with me, doing major damage to the screen. This device I’ve come to rely upon so heavily became nearly unusable. And I went through some serious withdrawals until it was repaired! It’s amazing, isn’t it, how in such a short period of time, these devices have become so incredibly ingrained into our lives and our behaviors? In his abstract paintings, artist Matthew Penkala uses airbrushed acrylic to allude to those ubiquitous glowing screens.

If you go to a concert these days, you’re more likely to glimpse a sea of cell phone lights during the ballad versus the usual lighter held high treatment. We stand in line at the grocery store, at the post office, not making eye contact or conversation with our neighbors but staring into that tiny rectangle. They’ve enriched our lives in so many ways, digital waves keeping far away friends and family ever close, but at what cost to the people in the next house, in the next room?

To see more of Matthew Penkala‘s work, please visit his page on Artsy.net.

All images via the Western Project website.

April 28, 2015
Lately. Yolanda Sanchez.

Artists by rule are an evolving species. We are ever learning, ever reaching for the next inspiration, the next way of seeing. So when I see an artist who has already been featured putting out exciting new work, I can’t help but want to share it with you! Miami Beach artist Yolanda Sanchez is showing a new body of work at J. Johnson Gallery in Jacksonville Beach, FL continuing her explorations of the “felt experience” in paintings that feel light as air.

Taking cues from calligraphy, Asian art, and poetry, Sanchez’s paintings seem almost short hand notes of the visual stories happening in nature. Flowers unfolding, dripping dew, colors tumbling one over another. These new compositions are lively but deliberate, each stroke carrying with it life and meaning.

To see more of Yolanda Sanchez‘s latest work, please visit her website. If you happen to be in North Florida, be sure to stop by J. Johnson Gallery in Jacksonville Beach to breathe in these works for yourself. Her solo show, There is Only the Dance is up at the gallery until May 15th.

All images via the J. Johnson website.

April 23, 2015
Essence. Saira McLaren.

Because we travel so much, our advice on particular places is often sought out. It’s always a challenge to distill a place down to the essentials. Sometimes the impression we take away from a place might be quite different from what we felt at the time. In her latest body of work, artist Saira McLaren epitomizes the changing impression of a landscape through layers of light and color.

It can be a challenge sometimes, to see the best of a place when your experience is less than ideal. On the other hand, more positive circumstances can create a favorable impression where it might not have existed otherwise. We call it “looking back through hindsight glasses”. The impact of a space whether positive or negative can be effected by the landscapes that came before or after. The sight of a lush green forest following a long stint in the desert heightens the its effect.

To see more of Saira McLaren‘s work, please visit her website.

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

April 23, 2015
Parallels. Sarah Gee Miller.

One of my favorite scenes when we’re road tripping is when the highway follows the path of a river. We wind through the mountains, all the while the rushing turquoise water next to the highway seeming to follow the journey of our apple red car. In her collages and ink and marker drawings, Vancouver artist Sarah Gee Miller “delves into the the relationship between primal shape and high-intensity colour to find balance and harmony.”

Her bright, saturated colors run against one another, sometimes following their path, other times diverging to create their own, yet always keeping within the confines of the whole. Just like the wild river is kept ringed in by the landscape, circles are bound inside hexagons, keeping their abandon in check.

To see more of Sarah Gee Miller’s work, please visit her website.

All images are via the artist’s website.

April 22, 2015
Lost. Karl Klingbiel.

Ever feel like you’re just kind of aimlessly wandering from one day to the next? I mean, we get up each morning, go through our routine.. shower, coffee, email, work, lunch, work, dinner, bed, rinse, repeat. But do we really have a sense of purpose? Is this all we were put here for?

The abstract paintings of Karl Klingbiel with their looping layers and chaotic color, bring to mind the way it feels at times to be here, to be lost in a world of our own making, our own choosing.

We move from one place to the next, one job to the next, perhaps even one relationship to the next and sometimes back again, always looking for that feeling of contentment, fulfillment. Maybe it is just our way, this wandering. Maybe because we were truly designed for something different, a kind of life we can’t even fathom, so caught up we are in the imaginary race we’re running against no one.

To see more of Karl Klingbiel‘s work, please visit his website.

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

April 21, 2015
Churning. Lorene Anderson.

After spending almost 2 years in small towns, it is such a treat to be close to a big city and all it has to offer. Recently Mr. F and I spent a Saturday morning gallery hopping, one of my favorite ways to spend a day! We hit up a bunch of galleries in Union Square, including K. Imperial Fine Art and it was there I fell in love with the work of Lorene Anderson.

Inspired by the rolling hills here in Northern CA, Anderson uses stripes to mimic the landscape but only slightly– she bends and churns their parallel lines to create movement and depth. What would have been solid and stagnant becomes fluid and lively.

While sharing work on the blog is important, I can’t stress enough how much difference it makes to get out and see art in person. The depth of the layers in Anderson’s work amazed me on sight. There was so much going on, so many little worlds to get up close and explore! And I’m still mesmerized by those stripes. Landscape painting has been around for centuries, artists will always be inspired by the earth’s beauty. But it is in the work of artists like Lorene, who show us a different vision of the land we see every day that I find endless inspiration and fascination.

To see more of Lorene Anderson‘s work, please visit her website. If you’re in the Bay Area, you can see her show, Landscape Multiverse at K. Imperial Fine Art until April 30th.

April 15, 2015
Convergence. Edwige Fouvry.

Trees break free from rocky soil. The sea crashes onto land. The natural world is filled with interesting and often incongruent intersections. In her paintings, French born Brussels based artist Edwige Fouvry calls our attention to those confluences to be found around us.

These places of intersection are often some of my favorites– the drama of cliff faces rising above a glassy lake is just too incredible to be true sometimes! Landscapes remind us of our own juxtapositions, the way our lives don’t always seem to make sense and yet, somehow we continue to thrive. There is a certain type of wildflower found in Florida that actually needs what we would normally think of as disaster ( wildfire ) in order to grow. Perhaps it is at those times when the sea crashes onto our shore that though we think we are drowning, we are actually being nourished.

To see more of Edwige Fouvry‘s work, please visit her website.

All images are via the artist’s website. Artist found via Dolby Chadwick Gallery.

April 14, 2015
Abundance. Todd Hunter.

Something about spring brings to mind the word lush. The landscape here in Northern California has been filled with blossoms and green. It’s like the earth is ready to explode with the joy of warmth and sun following the grey of winter. But we know all this riotous color is short lived, soon to give way to the scorched earth of summer. These abstract paintings by Australian artist Todd Hunter remind me that the overabundance of life isn’t to be taken for granted.

Just as Hunter’s paintings are a deluge of color and texture, so does our life sometimes seem overflowing with happiness and good fortune. We store up those feelings, to be called upon in the midst of the drought. But right now the rains are coming and we relish the abundance while we have it.

To see more of Todd Hunter‘s work, please visit his website.

Images via the artist’s website and the website of his representing gallery, Scott Livesay Gallery.

April 9, 2015
Coverings. Brian Coleman.

For painters, it can be so intoxicating to fall in love with those first strokes laid on a canvas. They can seem so pure, so guileless. It’s tempting to call it done. But what we learn over time is that choosing to cover and rework can bring depth and clarity that wasn’t there at the beginning stages. We might lose something we loved, but we always know it is still there, under the latest cover of paint.

Charleston artist Brian Coleman knows a thing or two about what he calls “excessive reworking”. Painting intuitively and to music, Brian’s thoughts and feelings flow freely onto canvas. Yet with many a freewheeling emotion, sometimes those first strokes need to be reigned in. Just as we push aside a hurt to focus on what is better, so his work reminds us to cover what was in hopes of finding better in the new.

To see more of Brian Coleman‘s work, please visit his website.

All images are via the artist’s website. Artist found via Anne Irwin Fine Art.

April 8, 2015

←Previous Page

1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 51

artsy forager

artistic pathfinding by lesley frenz

Blog
About
FAQs
Authors

Events
Shop
Patterns
Themes

Twenty Twenty-Five

Designed with WordPress

Loading Comments...

Write a Comment...

Email (Required)

Name (Required)

Website