artsy forager

Tag: Realism

  • Handle With Care: Yrjo Edelmann

    Handle With Care: Yrjo Edelmann

    I have yet to wrap a single Christmas gift.  But the online orders are due to arrive any day and I am supplied and ready to dive in.  I love this part!!  Every year, I would wrap my gifts just so, often thinking of what type of wrapping the giver might enjoy as much as making it look artful and pretty.  Some may think, “what’s the point”?  It’s what’s inside that matters, right?  Well, not entirely.  You see, to me, the gift is the entire process– spending the time choosing something the recipient will enjoy, carefully and lovingly wrapping the gift, and seeing their surprise and delight when opening it.  In these paintings ( yes, paintings! ), Swedish artist Yrjo Edelmann presents us with meticulously painted images of hastily and carelessly wrapped packages.  Are these treasures or leftovers from “the gift closet“?

    Magnetic Field Energy by Yrjo Edelmann An Important Property of Green by Yrjo Edelmann Critical Solution and Close Packing of Two by Yrjo Edelmann Packaged and Stringed Grey Powder Fields by Yrjo Edelmann A Packed View Over Harmonic Blue Fields by Yrjo Edelmann

    Now, just because a gift isn’t perfectly wrapped doesn’t mean that the giver didn’t put a lot of thought and effort into it.  Maybe wrapping just isn’t their thing.  Maybe they’re being ironic in a isn’t it more artsy this way kind of way.  But don’t we give more care to the things we find important?  Would you wrap a Picasso all willy-nilly?

    Sometimes I think we are so materially blessed in this country that we are rarely truly grateful for even the smallest of things.  I remember my grandmother telling me the Laura Ingalls-ish tale of being delighted in receiving an orange every Christmas as a little girl.  An orange! Not an orange iPhone, not an orange Lexus.  A piece of fruit.  And she looked forward to it every year.  This season, its my hope and challenge to give and receive freely and thoughtfully and with a gracious heart.  Every gift will be as precious to me as an orange.

    To see more of Yrjo Edelmann’s work, please visit the website of his representing gallery, Galleri GKM.

    All images via the Galleri GKM website.

  • Portrait of Things Already Come: Christopher Stott

    Portrait of Things Already Come: Christopher Stott

    We are a world that loves stuff.  One look at the tv show Hoarders will confirm that, as human beings, we develop emotional and psychological attachments to objects.  Certain things may represent for us the physical manifestation of the memory of a time, a place, a relationship.  Canadian artist Christopher Stott celebrates this connection by elevating every day objects to the subject of portraiture.

    Good Times, oil on canvas, 30×30

    Stott takes simple objects, isolating them against a neutral, traditionally lit backdrop, he treats them his subjects tenderly, as another portrait artist might portray the innocence of a child or quiet strength of a grandmother.

    GE Vintage Electric Fan, oil on canvas, 22×28

    Compositions containing multiple objects take on an interesting dynamic– they seem to communicate, to regard and relate to each other in an almost human-like way.

    Candlestick Phone and Electric Fan, oil on canvas, 24×24
    Remington, Overwhelmed, oil on canvas, 36×24

    By choosing subjects with an already inherent history, the artist celebrates the lives of these every day objects– the people they have served, the differences they may have made to a human life, the treasured memories that may be associated with their torn pages and chipped paint.

    Baggage, oil on canvas, 30×30

    To see more of Christopher Stott’s work, please visit his website.  Maybe these portraits will inspire you to look at your “stuff” a bit differently!

    Featured image is Quartet, oil on canvas, 48×24.  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?