I found Dolan Geiman, or rather he found me, via Twitter last winter. I checked out his online portfolio and it was love at first site… get it? Web site! Ok, moving on. Anyway, I totally fell in love with Dolan’s folksy/urban work. Salvaged wood, found objects, and quite a few birds {painted ones, not real ones} all lovingly combined to create mixed media pieces that were true soul-crushers! I’ve written about him at least three times, and I’m sure I will again. I was thrilled when he agreed to pop in for the weekend, but was quite surprised by the work he chose to write about. It’s fantastic, but so completely different than his own… hmm, perhaps that’s why he’s jealous:

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I am jealous of Leo Charre

Leo Charre stepped into my life draped in black, smoking a cigarette with his skinny grinning (then) bride at his side, and masquerading as the puppeteer looking for his puppets. I was selling art on the street and, three days later, the couple moved into my abandoned warehouse with me and taught me how to smoke used cigarettes and how to paint (how to really paint) and also the importance of drinking a glass of wine while watching the moon relax into a nest of tree limbs.  Leo was the first painter I met who made me feel awkward and foolish and downright unlearned.  He would quiz me on various artists I should know, and he would watch as I fumbled through oil paint, finally giving up and retreating back to my acrylics to let the master take over. He worked tirelessly for months on one painting while I knocked out hundreds. One day he dragged in a piece of plywood and sanded it down and left it sitting like a new born baby in the middle of the warehouse.  I couldn’t resist, so I dove in and created my first real painting on wood.  He was irate at the time that I had stolen his wood, but it was the break I needed and two days later I sold the painting and we used to money to by some really nice wine.  We lived and worked for months for the sake of art. We rarely ate, smoked a lot, drank a little, but mostly made art all day and then dragged ourselves out to the street to hawk our wares. When Leo’s marriage was on the fritz, we parted ways. Those were sad days. I didn’t know how to move forward.  I moved to Chicago in search of something new and found it. Leo weaved in and out of my life for a few years then disappeared.  As an artist, I have always been jealous of his abilities. He is a master of paint, nothing less.  I can only hope that in time I will get to be in his midst once more and that some of the genius might rub off on me.  And this time maybe it will stick.

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I think it stuck the first time around… it just happened to stick to a piece of wood instead of to canvas! Thanks so much for sharing this Dolan. Keep us posted on what happens next, please! This is a great story… and I want to know how it ends ; )

I’m not sure how many Brooklynites I’ve written about {I’m gonna guess 53}, but if you want the real skinny on the art community there, then I suggest you pick up a copy of Working Class Magazine. Why? Well, I’ll let them tell you in their own words:

“Working Class represents a community of local artists in New York… writers, photographers, poets, illustrators, models, small business owners, actors, musicians. We all work and live in this big city, and know the struggles of things like bad tippers, overpriced rents, and disagreeable weather. Working Class taps the pulse of the underground art world, and discusses why we all stick around.”

Sigh. So cool. Ok, it’s official, I’m jealous... and thinking about moving to New York, despite the overpriced rent.

{Working Class is a quarterly zine available in print or online, so pick up a copy, or grab your laptop, and get yourself down to a hip little coffee shop… oh, and don’t forget to tip!}

A tower of pastries, a pile of deer, a stack of birds, and a mountain of… well, a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, and of course we can’t forget the huge heap of jealousy that I’ve managed to stockpile since finding the work of American artist Justin Richel. It may not look as pretty as his paintings, but still, it’s quite impressive.

{If you’d like to know more about Justin, other than the fact that he likes stacking things, there’s a great interview with him on Little Paper Planes… which is where I first saw his work.}

When it comes to art that I love, I always talk about feeling a rush of uplifting inspiration, and total soul-crushing jealousy all at the same time… well, that definitely applies to how I feel about the work of American artist Trey Speegle. The jealousy part can be found in the two or three posts that I wrote last year, featuring his fantastic “paint-by-number” text based paintings… but today’s post is all about the inspiration.  As you can see from the invitation above, this Thursday night in New York, at Benrimon Contemporary, he’ll be showing twenty pieces from the past five years in order to benefit The Trevor Project – a leading national organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. Trey’s goal to is raise at least $1500, which would answer 100 helpline calls, potentially saving 100 young lives. Why not help him do that… all you have to do is buy a fabulous, soul-crushing piece of art. Easy.

{If you can’t be at the show, you can text TREVOR to 85944 to contribute $5 to The Trevor Project. For more information, please visit their website.}

After years of commercial illustration {where images always need to be scanned, retouched, digitally altered, and then retouched again} Stockholm based artist Stina Persson has finally had enough. In her new show, Perfectly Flawed, she’s decided to let the paint drip where it may, so to speak… and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such lovely imperfection! If you’re in New York this Thursday night, drop by Gallery Hanahou to see these gorgeous watercolours in persson… i mean, person. Wow. That was a really bad joke. Sorry Stina, I couldn’t help myself! xx

{Gallery Hanahou, New York, September 9 – October 1, 2010 : Opening reception Thursday September 9, 7-9 pm}

Amy Kligman is not only the author of a fantastic blog called ARTNICKS, she is also an insanely talented artist. I love, love, love her sweet/creepy/colourful/pattern-filled paintings and am doing everything in my power not to show them right at this very minute… you should know that I really want to though, but I won’t… because this weekend is about who Amy is jealous of. Right? Right… {but if you click here it just might lead you to the post i wrote about her last spring.}

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I’m jealous of… Elizabeth Huey.

Ok, so choosing just one artist to be jealous of was so incredibly difficult. I think at least once a week I come across someone whose work turns my head. There is so much amazing art out there. OH! The options… Christa Donner, Dana Schutz, David Ford, Amy Ross…..the list goes on and on.

But- Elizabeth Huey, you are the one I’m shaking my tiny fist at today.

Huey’s dense visual narratives create epic scenarios in landscapes dotted with universities, elaborate homes, nurses, brawlers, and bystanders (among endless other things). You could spend all day in one image, bouncing around from one vignette to the next, playing out the exchanged conversations between the elements in the painting. The texture and quality of the physical nature of the painting also gets me in the pit of my stomach… a mix of masked acrylic and oil painting, a combination of looseness , visible brushstrokes and intense detail. Its dreamy. And captivating. And I am so, so jealous.

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Well, now I’m shaking my tiny fist at both of you! Thanks for stopping by Amy, and so glad that you brought Elizabeth with you ; )

This book is amazing… well, exquisite actually. Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski,  and Matt Lamothe of Also, a small American design company, are the creators of The Exquisite Book {which, fyi, just became available for purchase two days ago}. The book features 100 contemporary fine artists, illustrators, designers and comic artists, each of whom were “given the page that precedes theirs to connect their own image to. They needed to extend the horizon line of the last page onto their page.” Such a great collaborative idea, with absolutely gorgeous results! Oh boy, that Christmas list of mine is just getting longer and longer by the second.

I’ll be honest, American artist Amy Casey has me a little worried. Does she know something we don’t!? She’s been having a recurring dream for the past eight years about the world coming to an end… which has obviously influenced her work. The paintings above are in chronological order from 2006 ~ 2010. Are you picking up on a theme? I have to say though, it does make me feel a bit better to see that the 2010 painting includes a safety net. That’s gotta be a good sign… right?!

{Thanks Brian!}

So, here’s some big news… I’ve just been asked to write a guest curator post on Etsy’s blog, The Storque. Yay! Clearly I said, Uh, YES! I think I gave myself about two seconds to bask in the excitement of it all before I started searching. Key word ~ Art > Painting > Original Painting > scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll… and there she was. Bette, a pink-cheeked brunette, with rose bud lips by Israeli artist Tali Yalonetzki. Oh yes, she’s going in the post for sure! Hm, or maybe I should show that fabulous cocktail party… or the sad lady in a green room… ooh, or maybe that black and white print! Sigh. Too much excitement for one day. I’ll start searching again tomorrow… key word ~ Mixed Media.

Oh, Holly Farrell… sigh. She is one of my favourite painters, and one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. I was at the Toronto Outdoor Art Show last summer, and was lucky enough to have a chance to chat with her, and see her lovely work in person. I’ve written about her vintage, photo-real oil paintings several times, and I have absolutely no doubt that I will again. Her work is very quiet and sweet, however, the paintings that she’s jealous of are definitely not…

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I am jealous of Michael Harrington

When I first saw Michael Harrington‘s work I felt pretty glum – definitely a ‘why hadn’t I thought of that’ situation…  I recognized the things he painted, remembered the people he portrayed and felt the colours he smeared across his canvases.  He took scenes from my life (ok, not actually my  life, but close to what I knew growing up) and put them eerily to canvas.  His work is creepy, dangerous and funny.  His work is very Catholic – might be he is  – there is a religiosity imbued in his scenes, they remind me of the stained glass windows that would line the church aisles of my childhood (before I quit Church).  These windows would typically depict scenes of life, death and hope – mainly stories from the Bible – they were there to teach us all lessons.  I can’t help but feel that lessons go unlearned in Harrington’s scenarios.  It seems something bad is just waiting to happen.

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Shudder. Yep, I don’t think those ‘cowboys’ are up to any good at all. Thanks so much for visiting Holly!