artsy forager

Tag: Americana

  • America The Surreal: Deborah Martin

    America The Surreal: Deborah Martin

    America is often a strange place and seems to just keep getting stranger.  Los Angeles artist Deborah Martin captures the sad desolation found across our country  in her poignant paintings.

    Aces and Spades, oil on canvas, 36×36
    Slab City Chairs, oil on canvas, 36×36

    Her use of a limited, pastel neutral palette softens the sometimes oddly grim reality of many lives in America.

    Keep Out, oil on canvas, 36×36

    Yet somehow, these aren’t dark, depressing images of life in one of the richest countries in the world.  They don’t feel critical or satirical, but rather reverent and dreamy.

    Fifty-two, oil on canvas, 36×36

    To see more of Deborah’s work, please visit her website.  If you are in the Los Angeles area, she is currently showing at The Red Arrow Gallery in Joshua Tree, CA.  I have a feeling these paintings are even more intriguing in person!

    Featured image is Yellow Camper, oil on canvas, 36×36.  All images are via the artist’s website.

  • Masterworks Monday: Edward Hopper

    Masterworks Monday: Edward Hopper

    Happy Monday, Artsies!  Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend.  This week’s Masterworks Monday artist is one of my all-time faves, American Realist painter Edward Hopper.   A feeling of melancholy tends to pervade most of Hopper’s work, but maybe that is why they appeal to me.  His scenes seem so very real, not just in their sense of time and of place, but in the capturing of a moment.  Early mornings in small towns DO feel desolate, being an attendant at a gas station on a far off country road WOULD be lonely.

    Early Sunday Morning by Edward Hopper

    Image via Whitney Museum of American Art

    Gas by Edward Hopper

    Image via Museum of Modern Art

    Don’t you want to know what’s going on with this young blonde movie usher?  Is she sad?  Is she contemplating making a change in her life?

    New York Movie by Edward Hopper

    Image via Museum of Modern Art

    Despite the lone figures or desolate landscapes, Hopper’s images are filled with light and in that, create a sense of hope within the isolation.  Early morning means it is a new day.. light coming in a window means that there is an escape from the darkness.  Whether this is what Hopper intended or not, it is what I personally take from his work.

     Morning Sun by Edward Hopper

    Image via The New York Times

    How about you?  What do you see in Hopper’s work?  How does it make you feel?