A cream puff being rescued at sea… Damn, I wish I thought of that. But I didn’t, Steve Bartlett did.

These paintings are so weird, and I love ’em. Not only am I jealous of Steve Bartlett’s painting skills, but I’m also very jealous of his crazy imagination… unless of course he actually saw a cream puff being rescued at sea? Hmm.

I’m not jealous of these sad little pageant queens… well, I’m a bit jealous of their fancy hair. Gretchen Ryan does such an amazing job capturing the ridiculous sexualization / adultification (Ok, I know that’s not a real word, but you know what I mean) of these young girls. But what I find even more intriguing is that they’re sad, well, maybe even angry. Usually when you see tiara tots they’re smiling til it hurts, and you can almost hear their mothers saying ‘We only do this because she loves it so much.’  I love that these girls don’t love it… at all.

{Gretchen is also part of the group show, ‘True Self’, currently on at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York.}

Sticking with my mask theme from last week, I thought I’d show these paintings by Luke Chueh, an amazing artist from LA. I went with the tamest ones of the bunch. His ‘cute’ characters are generally in some pretty gruesome situations. If a slightly dismembered bunny, or panda missing it’s eyes doesn’t bother you then you’ll love the dark humor of Luke’s work. I think the description on his site explains it perfectly… ‘cute with brute, walking the fine line between comedy and tragedy’. Exactly!

{Luke’s work is currently showing in ‘True Self’, a group show curated by Gary Baseman at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC ~ October 24 – November 21 2009}

Last  night was a pretty exciting evening for The Jealous Curator. I finally got to meet David Sedaris, my favourite writer ever! Not only did I get to say hello, and have a copy of When You Are Engulfed in Flames signed, I also got to put my Hanging with David Sedaris pitch directly into his hands. At this stage, I don’t even care if he says yes, I was just so thrilled to talk to him about it in person… Ok, who am I kidding, I really want him to say yes! Well, regardless of what happens next, his readings were hilarious, and he was kind and gracious about my idea. Such a fun night!

{Thanks so much to my wing man for coming with me… you know who you are.}

Three lovely additions to the beautifully boring show wouldn’t you say? These serene farmscapes are by Chicago based artist Emmett Kerrigan. I’m a huge fan of everyday subject matter, as you may have noticed by now, but these ones are mundane with a kick. The colour choices are amazing, and I love the big, flat fields of paint… no ‘field’ pun intended (well, ok, maybe a little intended).

I love these photographs by Joshua Jensen-Nagle. I actually thought they were paintings when I first saw them, but they are in fact photos. Maybe the little coloured dots are paint? Well, whatever the technique, the outcome is fantastic and now I want to go to the beach… anyone know where I can get a lot of confetti?

Real. Real. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake.

A real clothesline and real clothes pegs… but all of that clean laundry is just an illusion by a very talented painter named Beth Pederson. Yep, all of the clothes are oil paint on cut mylar. Amazing.

{I found this one on Eric Cator‘s blog, paintblog.ca ~ Thanks Eric!}

Share Some Candy has a section on artist’s work spaces, and I when I stumbled upon it the other day I couldn’t control the jealousy. My favourite studio belongs to a very talented illustrator/artist named Camilla Engman. She’s got a cute & creative loft in Göteborg, Sweden. Such a great space to spread out your supplies and just make beautiful stuff all day long. And the cherry on top of this studio? A little dog on a gold couch… I’ll take one of each please.

Oh! Just missed Tina Berning’s solo show at Gallery Hanahou in New York. The show was called Passengers and closed last Friday. If you live in New York, I hope you got to see it. If not, all 29 drawings that were in the show are now up on her site. Enjoy!

{I wrote about Tina for the first time last July… Yep, still jealous.}

How do you make a photo-real painting even more technically difficult? Do it on a series of individual panels and then put it together. Jeff Cohen makes this look easy… I, however, get a bit of a headache just thinking about it.