Ahhhh, peonies! Can you smell these from where you are?! I think I can! I saw these on The Artful Desperado last week and immediately fell in love. Here’s why…

1. Peonies are my most favorite flower ever.

2. These are paintings. PAINTINGS.

3. That’s all.

These insanely beautiful paintings are the work of Texas based artist Thomas Darnell. So gorgeous! Oh, if only they were really really really big…

YES ♥

{via the artful desperado}

Um… I love all of these pieces by London based artist/illustrator Alice Ferrow. Beautiful little collections, tiny cactus, coral, bell jars… and a bobcat. And her color choices? Don’t even get me started. Ok, now… here’s the thing. I am terrified of snakes. Terrified. But I have to say, Alice might have convinced me that they’re actually quite pretty:

Yep. When they’re 2D, and completely motionless, I like them. Kinda.

Ok, who wants to eat fruity popsicles while watching the sun set? Me too! Ahh, simple slabs of vibrant color – this lovely work by American artist Malissa Ryder is making me wish that I hadn’t given up on watercolors so quickly! Gorgeous.

{ps. Her originals start at $65}

Now this is a lovely, quiet, and peaceful way to start the week… I can almost smell the fresh morning air from here. These oil paintings {some on linen, some on board} are the work of Australian artist Judith Sinnamon. Her description of this work is almost as beautiful as her paintings … it’s like a poem and I just had to share it:

When concrete bollards and earthmovers moved in and restricted access, I returned to my studio studies of local flora.

Here, I worked from life, suspending branches of dotty zig-zag wattle and entwined weeping melaleuca above my easel with light flowing in from large glass doors. Using the pale blue of early morning skies and the soft shadows falling across the leaves, flowers and branches I aimed to evoke the luminosity and stillness of first light and the delicate muted tones of coastal flora.

Sigh. If you happen to be in Australia {Brisbane to be exact}, you can see Judith’s work at the Edwina Corlette Gallery until August 17th, 2013.

{via art hound}

Oh my. When these washy beauties showed up in my inbox I almost started writing today’s post immediately (ok, not almost… I totally started that very second). These dreamy, yet kinda eery, watercolor & resin portraits are the work of American artist Lisa Krannichfeld. All of them (and there are many more where these came from) are part of her “Glass Menagerie” series. Here’s Lisa’s explanation:

During my undergraduate years as a biology major I took a course in entomology. For an assignment I had to create an insect collection, carefully collecting specimens, killing them in a way as to not damage their bodies, posing them to best display their anatomy and containing them in a pristine wooden box.  Beautiful, numbered and preserved for all time.  In this series I wanted to explore capturing human emotion in a similar way. The problem with that is emotions are fleeting, inexact, and often blended with other feelings. The free, impulsive nature of watercolor offered a perfect medium.  The colors bleed and crash into each other; thin in places, intense in others, as the complexity of the emotions unfold.  The pieces are finished in a high gloss, indestructible resin, readying the specimens for display.  Together, a Glass Menagerie.

(ps. a few of these pieces are available as 11″x14″ prints… for $35!! um, yep, i’ll meet you over at her shop!)

a quick post about something i’ve been thinking about a lot lately:

“NO”. it’s the new black.

i am a people pleaser. i always have been. i’m also super-duper type A so i never want to miss an opportunity… of any kind {i’m told that i suffer from FOMO – fear of missing out}. granted, the result of this condition has been lots and lots of amazingly cool things that i am so blessed to have been part of, but … i’m tired … the weird thing is, i didn’t even realize it. that’s just how i operate – a zillion things in my head at once, heart racing, go go go, etc etc. it wasn’t until this summer that i made a conscious choice to start saying that scary little two-letter word… no. i felt a lot of guilt the first few times i tried it out, but miraculously the world didn’t fall apart! no one was mad at me either. weird. not what i was expecting. once the guilt faded i actually felt a huge sense of relief. i’ll get back to my regular life come september, but i am definitely going to throw my new favorite word into the mix a lot more often! you should give it a whirl… it’s fantastic.

{art from the sketchbook of martha rich}

Sigh. Pink hair, tiaras, and flower garlands. These are the lovely portraits of Italian artist Annaclara di Biase. I wish I could tell you more about these paintings, but that’s all I know. If only we could ask these girls what they’re painted with, and how big they are. Although, I suppose, it’s not very polite to ask a lady for her dimensions!

{Oh! thanks so much to Yasmin! She tracked down the info [oil on canvas and the dimensions]…. which you can find here.}

Ah, poetry & art… a perfect combination! This is a beautiful book of poetry, written by American poet Hannah Stephenson. She is an amazing writer/editor/teacher, with a great love for visual art. In fact, a lot of her poems are inspired by art… sometimes even work that she finds here! For example, after seeing the ceramics of Caroline Slotte, Hannah wrote this:

Great Migration

Patterns on china have begun

to show evidence of a great migration.

Waves roll out to a plate’s edges,

drop off, are absorbed into carpet.

In the stock-still water, feeling no wind,

cranes panic and launch, beat their wings

with such force that nearby villagers

mistake them for dragons.

Smaller birds leave their nests in the trees,

head for the dark, unporcelain woods.

Lovers no longer come here

to sit on the grass together,

discovering speechless ways to speak.

They stay away from this place.

The land here isn’t fed by any source.

Parents shield their children’s eyes,

pull them close when passing the pond.

Someone should do something, they mutter

and leave the land to its calm disintegration.

Whoa. Her newly released book, In the Kettle, The Shriek, is filled with beautiful poem after beautiful poem… but I also wanted to share something that isn’t in this book. Now, you know I realllllly don’t like showing my own work, but… last year I had a show at Seattle’s Assemble Gallery. Hannah saw one of the pieces, wrote a poem, and sent it to me. I almost cried. I could not be more honored… and I love the poem so, so, so much… I love it so much in fact, that I’ll even show you my work that went with it, titled “Jeremy Brown jumped over this at a bush party.”

Living Daylights

To find that part of me
still flickering,

to chew and exhale flames,
a dragon with a mouth
crammed with Bazooka Joe,

to use my heart
as a flashlight,

to meet my ghost
as a dance partner,
spinning away from me,
and back toward me,

to sift out the glowing shards
with unshaking hands
and swallow them back down,

to greet my fiery shadow,
saying, here is our bed,
our mirror, we can learn
one another again.

LOVE! Thank you so much to Hannah for this amazingly creative gift. Ok, now let’s all go buy this book : )

{cover art by Aron Wiesenfeld}

Oh, you guys. This is gonna be good!

So, just to refresh your memory: I’ve been asked, by the lovely Emily Henderson, to curate a show in LA at The Fig House, a new event space that Emily is designing/styling. I received zillions {literally} of submissions and I want to thank you all so much for that! Now, I’d like to say that made my job easier, but it really just made everything a whole lot harder… there was sooooooo much fantastic work to choose from, and I had the tricky task of getting it down to TEN ARTISTS! Impossible? It felt like it a few times. Well, after much back and forth, I’ve got a truly amazing group lined up. Yes, there was really great work by lots of people, but this came down to finding pieces that will work well together, and work well in the space that Emily is creating {art deco meets the 80’s. For real, people.}.

Here is a little taste of what will be on the walls when The Fig House opens this fall:

YAY – I love it all! As soon as I know the exact date of the opening party, I’ll let you know. See you soon, LA!

{1.(and right *) Stephanie Vovas 2. Kai Samuels Davis 3. Jaime Derringer 4.Ellen Heck 5. Clare Elsaesser 6.(and left *) Emily Rickard 7. Max Wanger 8. Nike Schroeder 9. Amy Wilson Faville 10. Zoe Pawlak}

I’m not sorry! In fact, I couldn’t be less sorry about showing you the work of Dublin born, Brooklyn based artist/illustrator Brian Cronin. Beautiful, vintage-inspired worlds that I would really love to visit … cable knit tents and baskets for bike helmets … oh yes, this is my kind o’ place! Now, not only am I smitten with Brian’s paintings, so is Milton Glaser. That’s right. Milton. Glaser. Here’s what one of the most famous graphic designers in the USA has to say about Brian’s work:

“Brian Cronin, who worked for me when he was an innocent lad from Ireland, has blossomed into one of the best practitioners for design and illustration in the field”.

Well that’s not too shabby, is it!?

{I found Brian’s work at ReneeRhynerShop.com. Pop over and have a look when you have a moment – lots of lovely work at affordable prices. I want that girl on the bike!}