Ladies and gentlemen… My Mooks! Custom ordered. Animal masks chosen by me. Ready to be displayed in my home. So cool!

I wrote about Kimberley Laurenti’s masked Mooks about a month ago, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So I bought them. They were my first official ‘Jealous Curator’ purchase. Hm, I better be careful… this could get quite expensive if I start buying everything that I write about. Note to self: never ever write about sculptures made of diamonds & gold.

I must have beef on the brain, much like the guy in the image above. After my last post featuring Ilana Kohn’s steaks I ended up finding these pieces by Christian Northeast. I found the top most image first, and then as I made my way through Christian’s portfolio I found the other two. I thought they told quite a nice little story when shown together… and now I’m hungry, but also slightly grossed out. Maybe I’ll just have an apple.

Hunks of meat, a puppet show and Christmas jeers… how can you not be jealous of this work by illustrator Ilana Kohn? I chose these three from her portfolio because I love the grey scale, quite detailed faces against the flat colours & shapes that surround them… and to be honest, and not artsy at all, I really really really like those big chunks of steak.

I’ve been charmed by Charming Baker. Ok, not a very original joke, but it’s true!

I had just planned on showing the first painting of the school group… but then I found the one with the horse… and then the one with holes drilled into it. I could have kept going too, but I stopped myself before it spun out of control. And that’s when I realized that I had in fact been charmed.

When I first saw these soft, yet striking, pieces by Melissa Doherty I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. Is it sculpture? Photographs of tiny models? Nope, they’re paintings. Oil on canvas. Amazing! Now in my defense, Melissa does say that she thinks ‘of each painting more as a still life, construction, or model, and a metaphor for comfort, desire, protection, isolation and facade’… so at least my model theory wasn’t that far off!

{This artist was brought to my attention by Eric Cator, another fabulous painter that I wrote about in July. His blog is called paintblog and features lots & lots of painters that would make anyone jealous!}

Don’t have a view from the top of the Tate Modern? Can’t afford a Barcelona chair? Really want Duchamp’s ‘fountain’ for your own private collection? No problem, artist Charlotte Mann will just draw it on your wall for you. How cool is this?! I might move into a windowless home, just so I can get Charlotte to come over with her fancy black marker and draw me the view of my dreams! (Paris from the top of the Pompidou Centre… in case you were wondering.)

Painting people is difficult enough, but put them underwater and then paint them… that’s a whole new story! Samantha French has a huge portfolio full of swimmers both above and below water. I love these paintings for their serene subject matter, gorgeous colour palette, and loose but very confident brushwork. I’d love to hang these three together in my summer beach home… but I don’t have a summer beach home, so until then I’ll just admire them here.

Let’s start Monday off with a small list shall we…

Top three things about Sunday in the City, a photography journal/project by sfgirlbybay (aka Victoria Smith), that make me insanely jealous:

one ~ The idea alone makes me think, Damn, I wish I thought of that. So simple, so fun, and such a great way to open your eyes to the world that’s right in front of you… Damn!

two ~ The images are amazing. All of them. She makes fantastic subject choices when she clicks that camera of hers, and she’s able to find the perfect match for each photo.

three ~ She is clearly spending her Sundays doing much cooler things than me!

Sun-bleached & suburban. Muted & mundane.

No matter how you describe it, Irish artist Mairead O’hEocha has put together one of my favourite combos. And the cherry on the top? An old ice cream sign. Sigh. Jealous & inspired.

I’m a sucker for a fresh box of perfect, waxy, multicoloured crayons, and clearly so is Christian Faur. He created this image of a little girl by using hundreds of brightly coloured hand cast encaustic pencils. I love the medium, the creativity and the subject matter… forgotten children made up of coloured pencils. Lovely.

{The closeup shown here is actually from another piece called True Color Series Servant Boy 1 but I thought it was a great example to showcase this amazing technique.}