Nothing says spring like girls with flowery tattooes! When I spotted this piece by Seattle artist Stasia Burrington on Artsyo, I was smitten with her work, her use of cut paper florals and girls is at once sweet and strong. Love it! I’m featuring Stasia’s work in my Artist Watch on Escape Into Life today, see it here!
Stasia Burrington on Escape Into Life
Artist found via Artsyo, image also via Artsyo.
I will never forget how intimidated I was during my first figure drawing class. And how incredibly awful I was. My professor was very encouraging, telling me to push through until it clicked. And then one day it did and I loved it. All that time spent agonizing over drawing the perfect figure gave me the freedom to let loose once I got it. Charleston artist Kate Long Stevenson seems to get it, too. Her elegantly sketched figures are perfectly imperfect.
With a minimum amount of line, Stevenson shows us the essence of each figure, a hint of a toe reveals a foot, shapes and angles slightly exaggerated so that our eye finishes the sentence they’ve begun.
Bold patches and slashes of paint cause the eye to follow the colors around the canvas, landing and concentrating on just the right spots.
To see more of Kate Long Stevenson’s work, please visit her Kate Long Stevenson website.
All images but Reclining are via the artist’s Kate Long Stevenson website. Reclining is via the Chicago Artsource Chicago Artsource website.
Hotels are usually advertised as a luxurious means of escape. A place where you don’t have to make your bed and clean, neatly folded towels appear while you are out as if by magic. But they can also be places of desolation and despair. Where a cast-out husband goes to sort out his life, where the traveling salesman spends countless hours missing his family. In his Hotel series, San Francisco artist Jeffrey Palladini explores the intimacies of this microcosm of life.
When I first spotted Palladini’s work at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, I was immediately drawn to his quiet expanses of solid color. The simplicity of his palette adds to the somber, isolated feeling in some of the work.
Then there’s the flip side of hotel visits– when all is fun and irresponsibility. Staying up late, sleeping in, lounging around the pool doing nothing at all. The anticipation of what might happen and memories you might make. In showing us glimpses of his subjects from behind, we voyeuristically gaze, wondering which kind of hotel scene we’ve stumbled upon.
If you’d like to see more of Jeffrey Palladini’s work, please visit his website. I hope you love this work as much as I do. Seriously it was like a scene from a hotel bar.. I spotted it across a crowded room.. 😉
All images are via the artist’s website.
I often envy Mr. Forager. When we’re camping or out hiking, he has no problem at all laying down wherever– absolutely no fear of bugs or other creepy crawliest like yours truly. He can really allow himself to be one with nature. The collages of Los Angeles artist Alexandra Bellissimo beautifully simulate what it might really be like for the human body to merge with the natural world.
Bellissimo photographs her models ( often she is her own model, giving even more emotional depth to her work ), in their own completely natural state.. No clothing, nothing between the skin and the world around it. The nude figure appears vulnerable, easily overtaken by the flora creeping over its form.
While there is some work done in Photoshop ( I.e., the removal of an arm to be replaced by a branch ), the added elements are done through traditional, meticulous cut and paste collage. In doing so, the artist maintains a very real feeling of physical transformation.
To see more of Alexandra Bellissimo’s work, please visit her website. And if you’d like to read about and see some insight into her process, be sure to check out her blog!
All images are via the artist’s website.
It is a special gift bestowed upon artists to take what is ugly and make it beautiful. In his Recycle series, photographer Cristobal Valecillos uses every day materials to craft the fashions and sets he then photographs, so that what is often never looked twice upon becomes elevated to extraordinary.
Every single thing but the models in each set is carefully crafted from pizza boxes, Starbucks sleeves, newspapers, etc., giving each design incredible texture and depth. The fashions seem to fit the models as well as any couture, and the drama of what seems to be unfolding in the expanded scenes lends those pieces in particular a wonderfully theatrical quality.
I spotted Valecillos’ work several times at the LA Art Show and the photographs, mounted on plexiglass are sleek and beautiful in person. However, it was the artist’s cardboard sculptures and set installation that really stayed with me. A reminder that every thing around us is temporary and fleeting, every chair we covet and save for, every piece of art hanging on our walls, every item of clothing carefully chosen.
In his artist statement, Valecillos alludes to the creation of beauty from waste, using recycling to inspire art. For me, I see in his work more of a statement upon the artificiality and ephemeral nature of the world we find ourselves in. What do you see?
To see more of Cristobal Valecillos’ work, please visit his website.
All images are via the website of the artist’s representing gallery, The McLoughlin Gallery.
I apologize in advance for the number of posts coming your way featuring artists whose work I discovered at the LA Art Show. I can’t help it. There was so much amazingness there and some of the work I just can’t get out of my head! I kept going back both physically and in my mind to the photographs of LA artist Gay Ribisi.
No doubt, we’ve all seen underwater fine art photography. But Ribisi’s method of blacking out the background and her storyteller’s style of setting each scene creates images that burn into our memories.
Her floating women, stark against their black backdrop are isolated in their moment and movement. We know there is a tale to be told with each one, perhaps epic or ordinary. It’s as if we’ve walked into a darkened theater in the midst of the 3rd act, who is this on stage? What is her story?
To see more of Gay Ribisi’s work, please visit her website.
All images are via the artist’s website.
Sometimes I wonder if fine art photographers read art blogs and think “Painting, painting, painting!” ( cue Jan Brady voice ). But painting doesn’t just happen with oils and acrylics. An artist paints their composition with whatever medium they choose and this month’s Featured Artist, Diana Lemeiux paints with a camera.
Lemieux creates and captures scenes from our dreams, mysterious and fleeting.. we see just a glimpse of a moment, not knowing what happened just before or what could arise in the next breath.
Her limited palettes help foster the emotion she is bringing forth in each image– moody, somber neutrals or bright, warm saturated hues give us a sense of each scene and the story it has to tell.
To see more of Diana Lemieux’s work, please visit her website and Facebook page. Diana’s work will be in the starring role on the Artsy Forager Facebook page all this month and be sure to check out the FB album full of my favorite Diana Lemieux photographs!
Happy weekend and happy February, Artsies! Mr. F and I are excited because 1) it’s the weekend.. duh, 2) we are heading to San Diego tonight to spend the weekend with dear friends, always a good time! and 3) a new month means we are that much closer to leaving the desert and heading back toward our beloved Northwest! But before I leave you to start packing for our weekend away, please allow me to introduce you to February’s Featured Artist, Diana Lemieux!
Head on over to the Artsy Forager Facebook page to see more of Diana’s breathtaking photography! Then come on back to this spot on Monday for more! You’ll be seeing lots of Diana this month here on the blog, as well as the Artsy Forager Facebook & Twitter feeds. Looking forward to a February full of photography!
I used to have two cats ( who now live with Mr. Forager’s mom ). One of said cats, Simon, used to occasionally turn his back on me and just sit very still, and at those times, there was a sense of sadness that always seemed permeate the scene. But then he would suddenly start chasing the sunlight or stretch out for a long nap. London photographer Elisa Noguera Lopez creates a similar sense of isolated moments in her series, Perhaps Finally Alone.
In this series, the artist places domesticated animals against a simple decorative background atop a plinth-like stool. Capturing her subjects in ambiguous, seemingly-headless poses creates a sense of lonely disquiet to each scene. Their backs to us, the subjects are disengaged, leaving us longing for acknowledgement.
While the scenes may feel lonely at first, the longer I study them, the more of an anticipatory feeling I get.. the cat is watching a lizard on the floor below, ready to pounce at any second.. the woman has just flipped her head upside down and will whip it back up Rita Hayworth-style.
What do you think, Artsies? Do you find these headless bodies charming or disturbing? Let me know in the comments! To see more of Elisa Noguera Lopez’s work, please visit her website.
All images are via the artist’s website. Artist found via It’s Nice That.
At times, there is much disparity in the art world between skill and talent level vs. level of fame and success achieved. There are some mediums in which it seems easier to get by on mediocrity than in others. Drawing skills, however, are very hard to fake. And artist Gillian Lambert has the skill in spades.
In her Self-Deception series, Lambert finds beauty in the vulnerable and grotesque. Female faces ( hers ) are partially hidden or disfigured in some way, yet not completely concealed.
In the same way, we try to deceive ourselves, don’t we? We put on this costume or that mask, hoping the world doesn’t see through. Not knowing how much more accepted we might be if we just threw back the veil.
To see more of Gillian Lambert’s work, please visit her website.
All images are via the artist’s website.