There is something so intriguing about an artist who chooses to focus on drawings on paper. It seems like such an introspective type of expression. Today in my Artist Watch on Escape Into Life, I’m featuring artist Joe Sinness, whose quiet works scream for your careful attention..
I’m going to kind of tell my age with this post.. I’m a child of the 80s. There, my secret is out. I remember all too well the punk movement– the mixing of Victorian-inspired lace with torn fishnets and combat boots. The latest work of Los Angeles artist Susan Carter Hall reminds me of those bad-a$$ chicks this good girl could never be, like totally.
Her soft palette and supple forms are punctuated with areas of darkness, lending a little hard-edge to what otherwise might feel overtly feminine.
Those punches of black and the slash-dash expression of color make Hall’s work bodaciously rad. Ok, enough of the bad 80s lingo. Her work just rocks. Period.
To see more of Susan Carter Hall’s work, please check out her website and to keep up with her latest work & shows, be sure to like her Facebook page.
All images are via the artist’s website.
I’ve never been one of those horse-crazy girls. You know the ones. Oh, I read my share of Black Beauty and The Black Stallion when I was young, but I just never caught the equestrian obsession. But we have been knee-deep in horse country here in Idaho and after seeing these creatures everyday, I can now understand the fascination. In her paintings, artist Karen Keene Day perfectly captures the untamed beauty and spirit of American wild horses.
Powerful yet gentle and graceful, the horse often serves dutifully yet you can see in their eyes the longing to run free.
Through her use of simple painted line drawing juxtaposed with slashes of vibrant color, Day translates into her work the innate wildness of the animals and unique personality each one displays.
To see more of Karen Keene Day’s work, please visit her website. The artist supports the work being done to keep wild horses safe by donating 3% of her commission on each sale to the National Mustang Association branch in Cortez, CO.
PS– If you’ve never seen the documentary Wild Horses & Renegades, I highly recommend it!
Artist found via Michael Mitchell Gallery. All images are via the artist’s website.
These last four months of living on a lake in Northern Idaho has had its advantages, wildlife spotting being chief among them. A favorite post-dinner activity of Mr. Forager & I is to take a long walk in the hopes of spotting a few deer, osprey, rabbits and lately, turkeys(!). While Mr. F loves to fantasize about how awesome it would be to be a bird of prey, I tend to humanize the animals we see. I like to think they are more like us than we realize. Today, I’m featuring a few artists who seem to also love blending the line between humanity and the animal.
Nate Frizzel | Kareena Zerefos | Charlotte Caron | Sabrina Hornung
I would love to commission Charlotte Caron to create a portrait of Mr. Forager as a grizzly bear– it would be his ultimate dream come true! What animal do you see yourself as?
Charlotte Caron found via The Jealous Curator, Sabrina Hornung found via Lost at E Minor. All images are from the artist’s websites, linked above.
Few places in the US hold our fascination like New Orleans does. It’s heady dose of hard partying, spirituality and historic charm completely enchants us. Chicago artist Grant Schexnider ‘s work addresses the iconography of New Orleans and the bayou with bold strokes and a seemingly carefree style, much like NOLA itself.
You can practically hear the jazz horns, taste the andouille, feel the misquitos’ sting. His palette is rich and warm, like the colors of the city’s weathered buildings and vibrant characters.
Deliberately messy layers remind us of a city that doesn’t take itself too seriously in spite of its history of hardship. The cheerful resilience of the people of New Orleans may be captured in the warmth of Schexnider’s palette.
To see more of Grant Schexnider’s work, please visit his website.
All images are via the artist’s website and the website of his representing NOLA gallery, Gallery Orange.
I am so taken with the way artists take common materials and lead us to think of them in a more abstract way. San Francisco artist Mary Button Durell uses simple tracing paper to create beautifully simple yet amazing sculptures.
Using the tracing paper and wheat paste, Durell hand shapes the forms, resulting in light, organic arrangements that seem to be suspended in a fragile state.
The cell-like shapes and translucency call to mind shells or bubbles, ever changing and fleeting.
To see more work from Mary Button Durell, please check out her website.
Artist found via Anthology Magazine. All images are via the artist’s website.
Lush color and luminosity? What could be better! Head over to Escape Into Life to check out this week’s Artist Watch on New York artist Kristine Moran.
The advent of photography has really shaped us into an incredibly visual society. While having a portrait painted was a luxury usually afforded to the most privileged, photographs were soon accessible to people of all classes and incomes. Photography became a common experience, faces of us all, captured forever. Charleston artist Greg Hart takes his inspiration from historical portraits, concentrating on the emotional expression of the sitter.
Hart pours through historical archives, searching for a face that grabs him. He strives to remain ignorant of the details of each person’s background, preferring instead, to give us new portraits, carrying the same emotional intensity made even more impassioned by color blocking and dramatic rendering against isolated backgrounds.
Serious, stern faces are rendered more warmly, softly reminding us that behind these steely facades are real people who lived and loved, just as we do.
To see more of Greg Hart’s work, please visit his website and be sure to check out his shop at Big Cartel to make one of these intriguing portraits your own!
Featured image is Firebrand ( cropped ). All images are via the artist’s website and Big Cartel shop.
If you’ve been reading Artsy Forager long, you’ve seen me gush about the work of this month’s Facebook Featured Artist, Christina Foard. Christina is an artist whose work is as much about her mental and spiritual journey of creating as it is about the physical result of paint on canvas.
Each canvas is a labor of intense devotion, worked and reworked until the artist is satisfied with her destination.
As she works the canvas, adding layer upon layer or excavating what lies beneath, the resulting textures become a large part of the story, until the composition she is longing for emerges.
To see more of Christina Foard’s work, please visit her website and be sure to check out her album on the Artsy Forager Facebook page! If you’re near the Jacksonville, FL area, you can still catch Christina’s show with July Featured Artist Thomas Hager at the Jacksonville International Airport, but only until the end of September. She’s currently working on a special long-term collaborative project I hope to share with you once she’s ready. Stay tuned.
All images are via the artist’s website.
Our first full day in Glacier, while Mr. Forager & I were on our big camping trip this summer, we did a 15 mile hike. The longest I’d ever hiked before was around 7.5 miles. And I need new hiking boots. This combo equalled some pretty painful, ugly blisters on both my little pinkie toes. I love hiking, but I’m not a huge fan of anything that causes me physical pain. Mr. Forager was appropriately contrite and to make it up to me, a few days later let me drown my pain in pizza, huckleberry ice cream and a little artsiness in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was there that I discovered some of the most striking work I’ve seen in a while– the work of mixed media artist Monica Petty Aiello. [ Warning: Online images do not do this work justice! The richness of the colors and texture can really only be appreciated in person! 😉 ]
Upon first view, I was drawn to Aiello’s work for the way it reminded me of the beauty of the geological wonders we’d just begin to explore in Yellowstone. These were familiar, yet most excitingly foreign.
The pieces are “actually topographical landscapes of the planets and moons within our solar system”. Not what you were expecting? Me either! Once I heard that, I could see it, but I also see other possible inspirations– such as fossils, lichen, microbiological imagery, geodes, underwater life.. the list goes on. It’s the ambiguity of these that is much of their appeal. We’re looking at a glimpse into another world, but which one?
To see more of Monica Petty Aiello’s work, please visit her website and the website of Diehl Gallery. What do you see in these?
All images are via the Diehl Gallery website.