Oh! Magical, Dr.Suess-ish wonderlands… enter the world of  American artist Heidi Leitzke. These pieces are from her “thread paintings” series. Her color choices are beautiful and her imagination is clearly top notch! Now, how do I go to there on this fine Monday morning?

Gasp! I’d love to wander around in these pastel-hued, magical, and very hilly wonderlands from morning till night! These mixed media pieces are the work of Australian artist Antoinette Ferwerda. This is what she does…

“… [Antoinette] explores the use of colour to evoke emotion.  Patterns in nature are still her fascination.  Her design stories and themes encourage a personal, thought-provoking connection with her art.  Her compositions reflect light, capture the geometry of shape and make Australian landscapes playful and abstract.” 

Beautiful.

Weird portraits. Yep, always a favorite of mine! This is the latest body of work by American artist Chambers Austelle. I wrote about an older series of hers … also weird portraits… when one of them appeared on the cover of Fresh Paint Magazine {now Create Magazine}. I loved those weirdo women, and I love these ladies too!

When I started The Jealous Curator way back in 2009, I’m pretty sure I wrote about California based painter Clare Elsaesser every ten minutes or so. Well, just for fun I swooped past her site today, and look what I found! Her work has always been lovely, but she’s managed to evolve her work into something even lovelier! Sigh…. and now I want to dance in a meadow with those dreamy, washy women.

{All of Claire’s work, both originals and prints, can be found in her online shop.}

Ok, I’m a little bit scared… I think the call might be coming from inside the house! Eeeee! Luckily, nothing is going to jump out of the darkness because these are not movie stills, they’re part of a series of stunning airbrush on paper paintings. Really. These cinematic gems are the work of Spanish painter {yes, I need to reiterate that these are paintings} Hugo Alonso. Here are a few words from the Galerie Youn site about Hugo’s work:

… Alonso lets us be seduced by the uncertain, in his own words, by a “hole behind a painting that one can approach so as to peer at that which seems far off to us in a strange manner, with a disturbing familiarity”. Hugo Alonso does not just work on deconstructing the processes of accessing painting but also the logic of the cinema and its elements ‘setting, plan, set dressing’ which he reorganizes in order to show new links to fiction, to a certain extent calling up the phantasmagorical.

Disturbing familiarity. YES.

{via Galerie Youn}

Loose strokes and tight detail … that combination always takes my breath away. These large-scale oil on panel “Treescapes” are the work of American painter Jessica Pisano. Wouldn’t it be nice to lie down on that washy blue ground, gazing up into those delicate treetops. Sigh. Happy Wednesday.

Hm, I don’t know how to write this post without sounding like a trouble-maker. Oh well, here it goes … these lovely nighttime paintings on paper remind me of sneaking out in high school… sorry, Mom. Ahh, the fresh summer night air, crickets chirping, and a dash of small town teenage rebellion thrown in for good measure. I’m not entirely sure this is what American artist Christopher Burk meant to conjure up with this series, but that’s exactly where my mind went when I saw his work. {ps. if you’re a teenager, please don’t sneak out!}

Wouldn’t it be amazing if artists got sent on week long trips around the world in search of inspiration resulting in gorgeous new work? Well, American artist Laura Berger did just that in Lima Peru, thanks to “The Jaunt”! What is “The Jaunt” you ask? Listen to THIS:

“For each trip we send an artist on a trip to anywhere in the world, to a destination where they have never been before. Once arrived, the artist will soak up all of the local impressions and inspirations. From freshly brewed local coffee to small boutiques, neoclassical architecture, overcrowded tourist sights or whatever else falls in their way. During the trip the artists keep a travel blog and document the many impressions they come across. This way everyone will be kept up to date with the travels and adventures of the artists, allowing a degree of familiarity with their perspective. Each trip is unique, because each destination and artist is different.”

What!? So fantastic. And, Laura & Lima? Literally a perfect combination! Now normally the art is bought, sight unseen, before the artist leaves – an exciting adventure for everyone {the print sales fund the trip}. But because Laura’s trip was in May, I can show you the results today! So, each artist is supposed to come home from their travels and produce one limited edition print based on their experiences but, Laura loved it so much, she made TWO {both shown above}. She didn’t stop there though – she also painted six original paintings! All of this work will be shown, and for sale, as of tomorrow – Friday July 28th. If you’re in LA pop by 3sixteen from 5-11pm. The prints are currently available online right here! ps. If you have any questions about the ins and outs of this amazing project, read The Jaunt’s very informative FAQ page.

Gasp! Ok, so I have written about London based artist Claire Brewster many, many times. I’ve even had her on my podcast to talk about her work… her paper-cutting installation work that she’s become very known for. Well, on that podcast episode Claire mentioned she was starting to play around with a new direction. She was not kidding! These are a few of her new mixed media paintings, and a beautiful letter about how she found her way to this work:

“At the end of last year when I first started experimenting with new work, I really thought I would be making wall mounted wooden sculptures.  I worked really hard on them, spent hours working on drawings, converting them into the digital files necessary for them to be laser cut, had a whole load made, painted them and then….

Nothing, the desire to make them disappeared, the ones I had made just felt wrong. There was too much time spent on the computer and not enough making. The need had been so urgent for months that I couldn’t think about anything else and then behind the noise of making these works and struggling to get them to be what I wanted them to be another voice came through.

Make collages with people, it said. And in truth I already was.

I have sketch books full of people (mainly women) cut out from magazines arranged together, like they are waiting for something to happen.This voice became stronger and stronger and it turns out this is the new direction I was meant to be taking. Not the wooden sculptures. That was something I had to get out of my system in order to move forward in a new direction.

It is amazing how ideas and inspiration comes about, it’s never straightforward. I’m learning everyday that I need to listen to my gut, intuition whatever you want to call it. It always knows best. When ever I follow that goodness happens, when I go against it things invariably don’t turn out so well.”

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

magicmakerdreamweaver … that is a perfect description for everything in the portfolio of California based artist/illustrator (and professor at CCA) Shannon D. Taylor. It also happens to be her Instagram handle. Rainbows, ridiculously starry skies, and two very tigerific reasons to start playing ping pong ASAP. Happy Monday.