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KEVIN! Oh my word, YES, this is how I want to finish 2019… with Kevin the Kitten. These hilarious {and beautifully painted!} pieces are the work of Australian artist Vanessa Stockard. If you want to smile every day, go follow her on Instagram… Kevin will be there waiting for you. You’re welcome.
Sigh. Inside on a cozy quiet day, drawing birds while drinking coffee. Works for me. These are just a few of the newest large-scale cyanotypes by Indianapolis based artist Casey Roberts … and, yes, I am totally using them as inspiration for the rest of the holidays. Coffee – check. Art supplies – check. Cat – well no, but I do have a wiener dog lying on a nearby rug, in front of the fire, right this very minute. Merry merry to you and yours.
Ahhh, I would love to spend a weekend inside that lovely head. This is the work of San Francisco based artist and illustrator Lindsay Stripling. I wrote about her three years ago and, I’m happy to report, the magic is still alive and well over there! Lindsay says, “I like to keep things surreal, edgy, and fun and explore themes of folk, nature, community and psychology.” Yep. Nailed it. Happy Friday.
This is “All the Clothes of a Woman (Hans-Peter Feldmann)” , and it is the washy watercolor work of German artist Manfred Naescher. Yes, he repaints previously created artworks – from Jeff Koons to Leonora Carrington – and I love them all. Here is Manfred’s artist statement:
“There is a paradox at the core of my drawing practice: What I do is both image-making and the avoidance of image-making. I hesitate adding to the continuous flow of visual material that we are subjected to daily, hourly, near-permanently. The creation of images, in my practice, is little more than an intentional side effect of my interest in the reflection on existing imagery: What is the image? Where does it come from? Why do we make it? How does it change in time? My work starts and ends with source material (usually from art history, that is, from the history of imagemaking or its margins): The source imagery remains clearly visible in the drawings, often placed at the center of the composition, isolated from its context, with an outline — a simple handdrawn line — providing clarity and sharp contours against the background of an indistinct cloud, inside of which digital image production is increasing at accelerating pace.”
… and here is the 1973 inspiration for these seventy paintings, titled “All the Clothes of a Woman” – a photographic series by German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann:
Gasp! These breathtaking portraits are the work of Netherlands based artist Katinka Lampe. I’ve written about her gorgeous paintings before… in 2010. Um, how did I let almost an entire decade go by before writing a second post? Trust me, I will not let that happen again! Here is the description of her work from Katinka’s site:
“Katinka Lampe paints portraits. Or at least, you can clearly recognise the representation of a person. Yet, this is not the main motive of the painting. The portrait merely serves as reason to make the painting. The portrait is the imagery concept. Her paintings greatly appeal to the beholders. Conscientiously and with a great sense for beauty she portrays her models, who are generally quite young. The resulting portrait is not an exact copy of reality, but instead a visual impression of it. By including things like a wig or a balaclava or putting a lot of make-up on the model’s mouth she adds an unusual or artificial character to her portraits. Lampe’s work is both vulnerable and distant at the same time.”
Beautiful.
Oh my word. So, beautiful! Born in the Philippines, Marigold Santos now calls both Calgary and Montreal home. I couldn’t decide if I should write about her dreamy acrylic paintings, or her haunting ink on paper works… luckily for me, Marigold often hangs them together, so I will too! This description is from her 2018 show, titled “in this drought, flood my hollow heart”, at Galerie D’Este in Montreal:
“Recent works of Marigold Santos continue to examine the ongoing theme of empowered selfhoods through embracing fragmentation and multiplicity of personal identity, informed by lived experience and impressed upon our landscapes, real or imagined.
In this exhibition, the emotional landscape is personified by drafting together memories and traversed physical landscapes to create a collage of meaning and experience.
Geological forms, objects, and foliage become the characters within these surreal landscapes. Through anthropomorphisation, they embody the projection of emotionality and function as surrogates for the absent body. Layered and collaged imagery creates an expression of specific moments; interior and exterior vignettes that, through a reflection of space and surroundings, invite contemplation and awareness.
Evoking hours of transitioning light, quiet and stillness provide the setting for meditations that comfortably hover in the gradient. As enduring time pushes mountain, carves rock, and highlights the slow yet persistent growth of arid plant life, the absent figure records memories that are edited together to create new narratives. Love lost, love gained, isolation, solitude, melancholy, depression, vulnerability and courage.”
Hm, I wonder if I’ll ever get tired of writing about the work of American painter Jeremy Miranda… NOPE! I’ve written about him several times, and as long as he doesn’t stop, neither will I. Here are Jeremy’s words about his work:
“In my recent work I am interested in creating complex environments that are a hybridization of both interior and exterior spaces. I am influenced by memory, history, domesticity, architecture, landscape and how, when co-mingled, can generate new spacial relationships. I draw from a cache of collected photographs, sketches, plein air studies and memory, and employ an unplanned, intuitive painting process in an attempt to channel an ambiguous spacial narrative.”
{Some of his paintings can be found via Dianna Witte Gallery in Toronto}
“Maybe She’s Born With It”, “Should Have Put A Ring On It”, and “I Woke Up Like This”… Okay, clearly I’m gonna need more coffee on this Monday morning in order to deal with the fabulousness of these oil paintings. OIL. PAINTINGS. Not only are they exquisitely painted, for some fantastic reason that I couldn’t find, there are jewels stuck all over these large-scale faces. This is the work of LA based painter Nora Ann-Francis Martin-Hall, and oh my word, I love them all so, so much.
Yes, that’s THE Esther Pearl Watson – and her trusty sidekick, Gherkin – out in the middle of the California desert. Esther is a Los Angeles based artist and she also teachers at ArtCenter in Pasadena. I like to think of her as a modern day Grandma Moses… if Grandma Moses painted narrative scenes of a slightly dysfunctional childhood in rural Texas. I loved Esther’s “memory paintings” years before I ever met her… let’s face it, she had me at “pink UFO”. So, Esther once told me that she reads strange stories from art history to her students while they’re painting, so I asked her to bring those stories over here! Yes, it’s officially “Storytime with Esther Pearl Watson”… psst… there are a lot of stories that involve pee, so consider yourself warned! You can listen right up there under Esther and Gherky, or subscribe on iTunes.
First up, a few of Esther’s paintings, complete with titles that definitely tell a story:
I love everything Esther does, and how she does it – finding humor in some not funny situations. So vulnerable, and so empowering.
So, let’s have a look at Grandma Moses. She painted “the good old days”, unlike Esther’s “dysfunctional days”:
See, all she needs is a UFO in the sky, and BAM, she and Esther could be art twins.
Alright, onto Esther’s stories! First up, tyrian purple:
Liz gets it. Purple from head-to-toe in every scene as Cleopatra. Ah, soooo many snails, so much pee. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, that should make you curious!
Next up, van Gogh’s vibrant, and kinda random, color choices … thanks to Julien, the paint salesman:
Ta-dah, the white roses that started out as pink roses! Oh Julien, make sure your products stand up over time, dude.
And of course, Paul Cezanne‘s “grotesque” bathers, butt cracks and all:
Apparently he didn’t work from models, but I wonder if he just needed some good glasses. Ah, we’ll never know.
And finally, I had to include this awesome photo of Esther WAY above the Los Angeles skyline. I assume she’s waiting for the mothership to beam her up:
And that’s that. Now, at the end of the episode, I said I wouldn’t be back until January, but I think I’ll pop in with a bonus mid-holiday episode between Christmas and New Year’s Eve… just in case your family is driving you crazy and you need a little escape to the studio! Thanks so much to Esther for digging up these amazing stories for us, thanks to THRIVE for supporting yet another episode, and huge thanks to you for listening! ~ Danielle
Other links:
“Birthdays” by Chattanooga based painter Mia Bergeron. I love this project so much! I’ll let Mia explain:
“Most people don’t know that I have done self portraits most of my life. In the past years, I have done one on my birthday every year to mark changes in my self, my thoughts, my techniques, and just generally to journal time in the mirror. It’s a little vulnerable to put some of these up on the Internet, I must say. Not many artists show work from when they were young (and not very skilled!). But when I looked through them all, I realized there were a lot of changes, and those things are worth showing, I guess. Being broke for all of those years, a self- portrait was my way of being curious about form and drawing, without wasting anybody else’s time. I was not a born draughtsman, as you can see. I worked very hard, and fought through a lot of my issues with drawing with dozens upon dozens of sketchbooks filled with horrifying sketches … I didn’t paint any self-portraits while I was 23-25, due to my time in Italy studying, and frankly being too enamored with everything around me to care about a mirror. In 2017 I got married, so my husband appears in the portrait with me.”
Vulnerable, and beautiful. I can’t wait to see what 38 holds for her. Happy Friday.
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