Eleanor McCaughey

Daniel Arsham

2012-02-12T13:25:00.000Z

I am excited about this artist... he seems to try his hand at many things. "Arsham’s work blurs the lines between art, architecture and performance, and explores issues of natural versus manufactured or intention versus happenstance." " Through sculpture, drawing, painting and performance, Arsham challenges our perceptions of physical space in order to make architecture perform the improbable. The surfaces of walls appear to melt, erode and ripple. Animals contemplate the emergence of floating shapes in nature. Sculptures from antiquity are infused with rigid, geometric forms.

Damien Hirst

2012-02-10T10:49:00.000Z

Im not a huge fan of Damien Hirst, he's either a genius or a complete chancer...maybe both ha! but I found this interview pretty interesting.

Damien Hirst's "Spot Paintings" that are being exhibited at the 11 Gagosian Galieries worldwide have created significant buzz in the art world. Some love the paintings, others have an aversion to what they may imply about the art market itself. EIther way, Hirst's work is a topic of conversation and must be regarded as an influential force in the world of contemporary art. Despite the varying opinions that may surround the shows, the spot paintings are beautiful. Their simplicity and refinement yields a very pleasurable experience. In moments of such controversy, its always nice to hear from the artist himself and Matt Black offers us this video to give us some perspective from the man behind the spots.

via: http://www.nowness.com/

Damien Hirst: On the Spotfrom Matt Black on Nowness.com.

kristin Baker

2012-02-10T10:00:00.000Z

' Kristin Baker is bending painting’s seeming limitations. By emphasizing the materiality of paint through her built up layers of troweled acrylic, Baker’s paintings approach other two-dimensional practices such as printmaking, photography and paper assemblage. While upholding the power and dynamism of painting, Baker seeks to create a third dimension in between many genres and hindered by none. Her compositions combine illusionistic and pictorial space as well as blatantly artificial forms and surfaces. Each mark and shape is created not by a brush but by an outline of torn tape. The final silhouette is filled in with paint, and when the tape is ripped away, a free-floating “gesture” or “mark” is added to the piece. These shapes are layered together to make forms and landscapes or scraped away to reveal the colors underneath. Layers of these joints create tufts, grooves and corrugated surfaces that approximate collage or even the planar aggregation of 3D digital imaging techniques. Using scraping tools Baker rubs, abrades and smoothes until the surface is like an x-ray of the past'. by Deitch

Carole King "It's Too Late"

2012-02-09T12:33:00.001Z

Heard this on the radio this morning....I love this song....

My new website

2012-02-09T10:54:00.000Z

I finally got around to creating my website....I feel a lot more organised now....check it out.

Os Gemeos ‘Fermata’

2012-02-08T10:47:00.000Z

Otávio and Gustavo Pandolfo are always changing it up.. really taking on a space, pushing their paintings to another level. I came across their new installation 'Fermata' via AO, 'their latest exhibition in Vila Velha, Brazil, is a graffiti-minded colorful world of both fantasy and reality.'

Caitriona Sweeney

2012-02-05T10:18:00.000Z

I'm loving the pattern, delicacy and otherworldly quality of Irish Illustrator Caitriona Sweeney's watercolours. They are so beautiful.

Nicholas Lockyer

2012-02-03T10:53:00.000Z

I love this artists work, I found it through his Flickr page. Nicholas Lockyers Collection of colleges deals with themes of society, horror and the abstract. You can buy his prints here, how amazing are these............

Cy Twombly

2012-02-02T10:26:00.000Z

Edwin Parker , Cy Twombly Jr. (April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011) was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. He exhibited his paintings worldwide.

Twombly used the nickname "Cy", after his father (also nicknamed Cy, who was briefly a pitcher in Major League Baseball) and the star baseball pitcher Cy Young. Twombly's paintings blur the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive "e"s. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge – each mark with its own history as its proper subject.

Tate's Director Nicholas Serota gives us a behind the scenes tour of the Cy Twombly exhibition (2008) as he makes the final adjustments to the hang just before opening. A long-standing fan, Serota talks about Twombly's technique, his relationship to Turner, and how the artist, in his eighties, was still producing at the time.

Camile&Henry

2012-02-01T11:11:00.002Z

Taking inspiration from 'The Secret History', the 1992 debut novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt , I made this new painting.

Entitled 'The secret History'
Oil and acrylic on wood
24x30cms

The Secret History is set at a fictional college and concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group.

James Ensor

2012-01-31T10:12:00.000Z

James Ensor (1860–1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth. He has influenced generations of later artists. Ensor contributed to modernity with his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing.

'He knew all the right art-world people but hated most of them and was sure they hated him. He was an aggrieved traditionalist with a pop-culture itch, equally entertained by Rubens and tabloid cartoons. He was a sophisticated artist who helped shape early Modernism, not in a Paris studio but in an attic room over a novelty shop in a resort town on the North Sea'.

Here is a great article about him from the NYTIMES (By HOLLAND COTTER) before the opening of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern 2009.

Antony Micallef

2012-01-30T09:36:00.000Z

Antony Micallef (born 1975 in Swindon), English contemporary artist and painter.
Internationally acclaimed artist Antony Micallef appeared on the art scene in 2000, winning second prize in the BP Portrait Award competition. Since then his mix of political imagery fused with contemporary expressionism has won him world wide acclaim. Recent exhibitions include group shows at the Royal Academy and the Tate Britain.

Bohren and der club of gore

2012-01-29T12:53:00.000Z

I only discovered Bohren and der club of gore the other day, I have been listening to BLACK EARTH , Reissued in 2004 from IPECAC. Awesome album...very 'Twinpeaks'!

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Constant Fear...check it out

Carvens Spring/Summer collection

2012-01-28T00:02:00.000Z

Salmon, pinks, orange and limes....I love the colours and patterns in CARVEN'SSpring/ Summer collection .

Carven Spring/Summer 2012 | Women's Show from Carven Paris on Vimeo.

Jeremy Geddes

2012-01-27T15:07:00.000Z

Jeremy Geddes is on the cover of this months Juxtapoz magazine. Geddes is a Melbourne based artist. I think his painting technique is incredible, his paintings are photo realistic, portraying extremes in emotion. He’s been published in several books and magazines, picking up a Spectrum Gold Award for his comic cover Doomed.

Jan De Maesschalck

2012-01-25T10:25:00.000Z

Jan De Maesschalck’s paintings represent a sharp view on topical subjects and the news. However, his clear observation of current events is depicted within an atmosphere of muse and memory. As such, his work represents an impression of melancholy and mockery, yet both in a mild form. His subjects relate to an impression of intimacy and loneliness, but the mood is never harrowing or heavy. According to De Maesschalck, melancholy leads to beauty. The tone set in the depiction of schadowy interiors and forlorn women is relativising and even humorous. All works speak of a strong but indefinable desire. The paintings are tender riddles.
De Maesschalck’s metier reveals an extreme attention for detail. With technical precision, he prepares his paper and draws with paint. Utilising acrylic paint that dries immediately, De Maesschalck has to work fast. At the same time, the chosen method enables him to differentiate techniques and materials during the creative process. He is drawer and painter at once. Brushstrokes are visible, and hence his secure draftsmanship contributes to the vibrant quality of the works.

The aesthetics of Ghost Box

2012-01-24T21:10:00.001Z

Ghost Box Music is an English independent record label, established in 2004 by Julian House and Jim Jupp.

In an interview with Cyclic Defrost, Jim Jupp commented;“Part of a theme that’s ongoing in all the Belbury Poly records, and I think all of the Ghost Box records is a tradition of British science fiction, where you’ve got on the one hand the setting of a very traditional background, with very ancient things, but you’ve got this weird, cosmic stuff happening at the same time. A lot of old British sci-fi books – John Wyndham, for instance – have these really mundane, quaint little village settings, but all of a sudden something really freaky and cosmic appears in the middle of it."

I love this song 'A great day out' from Belbury Poly - From an Ancient Star

Releases on the label (presently encompassing The Focus Group, Eric Zann, Belbury Poly, Roj and The Advisory Circle, and a rerelease of a Mount Vernon Arts Lab album) tend to share a common design aesthetic - all record covers so far have been by Julian House, with an acknowledged debt to the iconic design of sixties Penguin Books paperbacks.

Ghost Box had a defined aesthetic from formation; Julian House commenting:“ ...the best way to put our stuff out was to start a label.. There was such a richness to the references we both shared, not just musical.. It made sense that we could put releases out which had this complete world attached to them.. A set of things united by a design identity, fragments of real or imagined books, collections of images, films, links... Something people can become lost in and want to be a part of.."

What makes a masterpiece?

2012-01-23T18:26:00.000Z

I watched this interesting three part series on 4od called...What makes a master piece?. Well worth the watch. Being a visual artist I was very interested in the last episode were Matthew Cain explores the relationship between neuro-aesthetics and visual art.
At London's Tate Britain a unique experiment is under way. Wearing specially designed goggles to track how eyes move around a painting and receptors to monitor breathing, sweating and heartbeat, Cain and members of the public are monitored to find out whether paintings can literally set our pulses racing or take our breath away.
The experiments throw up some surprising results about what we respond most strongly to, even casting Brit Art enfant terrible Damien Hirst in a different light.
UCL Professor Semir Zeki - one of neuro-aesthetics' leading lights - believes he's discovered a 'formula for beauty'. Zeki scans Cain's brain while showing him artwork from Lucien Freud to Leonardo da Vinci to see what stimulates a part of the brain Zeki terms the 'beauty spot'. Can Zeki tell which art Cain really likes or even if he's telling the truth?
If there's a formula to good art, can the masterpieces of the future be created using a scientific check list? To find out, Matt commissions a painting combining everything he's learned about visual art.

CHECK IT OUT!

Philip Taaffe

2012-01-20T20:13:00.003Z

I go through phases were i am completely hypnotised by colour and pattern and other times I am drawn to some what more dreary,subtle palettes. Recently I have been enjoying pattern and colour and was reminded yesterday of the work of Philip Taaffe, which is right up my alley at the moment. I went to see his exhibition at IMMA last year and it was overwhelming but amazing at the same time.

Philip Taaffe (born 1955) is an American artist. Taaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and studied at the Cooper Union in New York, gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977. An admirer of Matisse’s cut-outs and of Synthetic Cubism, from the mid 1980s he began to borrow images and designs directly from more recent artists. In We Are Not Afraid (1985), he develops Barnett Newman’s zip motif into a spiral; the title is a reply to Newman’s series of paintings Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue (1966–70). In Defiance (1986), he reinterprets work by Bridget Riley.

'An artist makes something to be physically experienced by another person. It’s a raw, freely chosen, interpersonal relationship between the maker and the viewer, so it’s close to what a musical composer does, or a poet or a dancer. It is something that is coming out of one’s inner being.' Diego CORTEZ: A Conversation withPhilip Taaffe, 2009, New York City

SatOne

2012-01-19T11:08:00.000Z

SatOne is an artist from Munich, originally from Venezuela.
The skilled graphic designer discovered his interest in graffiti in early life. He has developed a very unique style of painting combining design, illustration and abstract art . He just had a show in NewYork at the Firstlines Gallery and I came across the flicks of the exhibition through Graffuturism...they are exciting, looks like a great exhibition. The show is entitled CHROMOLOG.

photos by Max Geuter

2012-01-19T10:43:00.000Z

I like the work of Irish artist Cara Thorpe. This is what she says about her work,

“My paintings involve a process of working and re-working through the application and scraping away of layers of paint to create textured surfaces. From this, fragments of imagery are pulled through and offset by areas of flat colour. There is a documentary quality to the imagery, which borrows from old war photographs and current newspaper clippings, suggesting the timeless dialectic of war. I play with ideas of the "predator", referencing fighter planes, birds of prey, monster tanks and men of power. I also try to communicate the tragedy of the consequences that these predators inflict on the landscape, and their prey. The overall effect I want to encompass with my paintings is one of somber ambiguity. I aim for a dialogue between the viewers perception and the metaphorical resonances of the work.”  Cara Thorpe, November 2004  

Mad Men

2012-01-16T16:18:00.000Z

Ok im not a Barbie fan.....but I found myself on the barbie collector website and I came across these Mad Men dolls....thought they were pretty cool! I love Betty Drapers dress :)

Sarah Milton

2012-01-13T11:31:00.000Z

I was browsing through Design*Sponge and I came across a post about Sarah Milton's wallpapers. Personally I don't think I could have any of these covering the wall in my home, maybe in an office or studio? but they are amazing! She does great prints too.

Sarah's first professional collection of wallpapers is entitled Legible Process/Illegible Type and is a playful switch between what is usually legible, typography, and what is not, process. Working solely with letterforms, numerals and characters, she creates obscure geometric surface patterns by abstracting typography into new shapes and forms. These patterns are then mixed with marks and textures collected during silkscreen printing to communicate how the wallpapers are made. All wallpapers are hand silkscreen printed by Sarah personally and are available exclusively through Bouf.com

kris knight

2012-01-12T12:51:00.000Z

Kris Knight is a Toronto-based artist whose work examines performance in relation to the construction, portrayal and boundaries of sexual and asexual identities.Since graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2003, Knight’s practice has concentrated on figurative works that explore various expressions of duality, often dealing with notions of hiding and fronting, ambiguity and androgyny.His work involves the creation of invented and biographical character-based narratives that attempt to find a balance between the dichotomy of pretty and menace.

Melanie Authier

2012-01-11T10:00:00.000Z

It appears to me this style of painting seems somewhat on trend right now maybe? I do really like Melanie Authier's paintings alot.

'Authier's paintings, bring together visual contradictions into one imaginary space. By drawing upon the histories of abstraction and the strategies of representation, she presents improbable environments. A sense of disorientation comes about through the way in which colour, texture, line and shape compete for room within the canvas. Each work presents a brimming jostle of oppositions that the viewer is invited to bring into a certain order.'

The secret history

2012-01-10T23:49:00.000Z

My new years resolution is to read more.....I'm a terribly slow reader. So my first book of this year is The Secret History, the 1992 debut novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt.

The Secret History is set at a fictional college and concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group. I am already half way through this book which is crazy for me...its a good one! The Guardian says it was' gripping and clever and fantastically erudite and people became a little obsessed'.

Alexander Tucker

2012-01-06T15:05:00.000Z

I love Alexander Tucker's album Dorwytch....Three years in the making Dorwytch finds Tucker refining his song craft and introducing minimalist string movements that build into dense spiraling riffs around his distinct vocals. With varied sounds and grandiose ideas, the album marries the abstract with more traditional song structures, using layering techniques to create the illusion of an ensemble. This album is the first time Tucker has used drums, collaborating with free improv drummer Paul May to create rhythmic improvised beats.

Alexander Tucker is an English musician from Kent who writes, records and performs alone and in collaboration with a varied array of artists. One critic writes that "Tucker sounds like he’s following a tradition that has long been neglected, focusing not on ageless songs and ideas but on ageless feelings captured through his droning miasma of acoustic guitar and mandolin.

Adrian Ghenie

2012-01-05T19:03:00.000Z

I was reminded today of the dark and cinematic work of artist Adrian Ghenie. In an interview from 2009, this is what he says about his work.......

'If you look at my works, there is a filmic quality in all of them. In my case, the film has provided the most important ingredient of my visual background. When I paint I have the impression that I am also involved in directing a film. Looking at a film made by Lynch or Hitchcock, experiencing the tension and drama of a thriller is at once realistic and beyond the ordinary. For me, the genius of cinema resides in its capacity to project an illusion. The emergence of every artistic medium relied on a technical invention that was originally designed to serve a practical purpose. At the beginning there was no aesthetic. All of a sudden one looked at moving images that previously existed only in one’s imagination. The first films had a certain type of grandeur because they captured historic moments, stories and myths that had to be represented on screen. There was the need to create worlds, inaccessible in everyday life. In the same vein, when the van Eyck brothers invented the oil painting technique they realized that it had the capacity to render details, texture, volume with an astonishing accuracy. An accidental slip of the paintbrush could yield unexpected results, looking like sand or fur or the leaves of a tree.'

Claire Carpenter

2012-01-03T11:52:00.000Z

Alongside Graham Chorlton and many other great artists Claire Carpenter is with the Cross Gallery, Dublin.

There is a shifting blend of fantasy and recollection in Claire Carpenters predominately small scale tempera on gesso paintings. Using passages of loose rhythmical brushwork Carpenter conjures up a dream-like and intimate atmosphere and then weaves it together with intricate narrative details. This complex relationship between the remembered and real, abstracted and representational creates an uneasy balance and tension within the frame, as if each brush stroke hides a dark secret.

Meticulously rendered depictions of animals, human figures, shells and landscape details seem to loosely refer to the artists own memories and ask questions about how we see, how we know and how we remember. However this hidden personal narrative, is full of contradictions and is open to interpretation as we are never given enough information to be conclusive about what she is trying to say, forcing us to surrender and open up to what is before us.

Julia Holter

2012-01-02T12:10:00.000Z

I am really into 'Tragedy',Julia Holters album, Boomkat gave it number 1 album of 2011 also.

Julia Holter | Try To Make Yourself A Work Of Art from Leaving Records on Vimeo.

Urban Forms Murals

2012-01-02T12:00:00.000Z

I came across this on Graffuturism.......*Update Video Galeria Urban Forms Murals Remed Sat One Kenor Aryz Sainer Sepe Bezt Chazme M-City

GALERIA URBAN FORMS from Urban Forms Foundation on Vimeo.

I especially like ARYZ's work

Graham Chorlton

2012-01-01T11:56:00.000Z

GRAHAM CHORLTON is based in England, in the West Midlands, but he has shown work in Ireland on several occasions. Mark St John Ellis included him in a group exhibition, The Obsessive Garden , and he’s been an award-winning exhibitor at the RHA Annual exhibition.

Chorlton collects postcards, and the postcards serve as the basis for his paintings. For the most part they are not conventionally scenic views, though he does have a penchant for cherry blossom and other flowering trees. Otherwise he depicts anonymous urban settings, including city centre expanses and more isolated modernist blocks that look like the kind of architecture you usually encounter on the urban periphery.
They are ordinary places, presumably densely inhabited, but we don’t see much of the inhabitants – a single, distant car on the road, perhaps – and the mood of the images is tinged with a gentle, reflective melancholy. Often scenes are glimpsed by night. Chorlton likes the misty fluorescence of garage forecourts and the pools of artificial light that dissolve the hard edges of deserted city streets.

Scary Sarah Palin

2011-12-30T12:10:00.000Z

Head of documentaries, Hamish Mykura, who commissioned the documentary for Channel 4, said: "From the icy snows of Alaska in mid winter, this is Nick's quest to find out about Sarah Palin from the people who know her best. Nick is one of our foremost documentary talents and this film follows in the tradition of many of his great portraits of influential figures."Director Nick Broomfield meets school friends, family and Republican colleagues that previously backed the charismatic and charming ex-hockey mum. But Broomfield finds it's not all plain sailing, and discovers a small town fraught with feuds where close friends have become bitter enemies, and the question on everyone's lips is ‘are you with her or against her?' He adds: "People are frightened to talk, Wasilla makes Twin Peaks look like a walk in the park. It's a devout evangelical community - 76 churches with a population of only six thousand."

This is a great Documentary and well worth the watch!! Check it out!

These are pretty funny too.

Cian McLoughlin

2011-12-23T20:33:00.000Z

I went to see Cian McLoughlin's exhibition today in the Molesworth Gallery. I was super inspired, his works for this exhibition were all done in chalk on paper.

MadC @ Hallenkunst

2011-12-21T10:33:00.000Z

Sacha Seguel

2011-12-18T20:06:00.000Z

Sacha Seguel, artist from Santiago, Chile.

Coralie Bickford-Smith

2011-12-17T15:41:00.000Z

Please judge these books by their covers. Design geeks and bookworms alike have fallen in love with Bickford-Smith's beautiful -- and thoughtful -- work. "The challenge is to entice a new audience to the literature and also to not alienate die-hard fans," she says. To re-create a collection of Penguin Classics -- think Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations -- the London-based designer chose Victorian-style cloth bindings that feature stamped patterns pointed to each book's content (for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, flamingos). An F. Scott Fitzgerald series features metallic art deco designs. "I want these books to be cherished like the literature inside," says Bickford-Smith of her obsessive attention to detail. "If something is well considered, it will entice. People want to explore it, feel it. That design shines through and connects."

Katharina Grosse / Graffiti

2011-12-15T13:07:00.000Z

The Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse is known for her immense installations that examine how painting functions in an expanded field.

In this intereview Katharina Grosse says.... "There is no connection to graffiti, I don't mark areas, signifying that its mine. Graffiti is actually marking possessions, its making claims on certain areas, saying , if you go into that area you are actually trespassing, where as my work is about the opposite, it's about, inviting people to trespass, and the freedom that is implied with that activity."

Maybe contemporary artists are too quick to dismiss graffiti as an important art form. Graffiti artists have been making contemporary site specific painting installations for years,whether it is in the gallery setting or outside in the public space.

Graffiti/graphic artist Matt M Moore

Graffiti/graphic artist Barry Mcgee

Graffiti/graphic artists Os Gemeos

Graffiti/graphic artist Delta

And not to mention the artist from my last post....ZEDZ

ZEDZ

2011-12-13T11:04:00.000Z

Check out this interview with Dutch graffiti artist ZEDZ for Graffuturism.

ZEDZ, the dutch graffiti-writing master, sculptor & artist realized a fine art print that subsequently went spread-painted on a huge bridge in Milan - Italy. The site specific public painting interested more than 1000 m² and was protected by an innovative paint developed in Japan. The artwork got the praise of City Council and citizens and was celebrated with ZEDZ's canvas & sketches exhibition from december 1st to december 18th 2011 @ Urban Center - right in the heart of Milan Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, in front of the Dome. STREETART.COM produced the fine art print in a limited quality serie and this video of the whole experience.

ZEDZ - From Art Print Study to Urban Regeneration - Milan from STREETART.COM on Vimeo.

Arno kramer

2011-12-12T10:17:00.001Z

Dutch artist Arno Kramer’s recent body of work which features small drawings and site specific works, depict an array of figures: animals such as hares, swan, and deer which he relates both to human, female bodies or to fragments of the Irish Landscape. Kramer’s practice is rooted in his fascination in the development of contemporary drawing…

Jo Baer

2011-12-10T18:31:00.001Z

Jo Baer was a key figure among the celebrated protagonists of Minimalist painting in New York in the 1960s and first half of the '70s. It was during that period that she executed her series of different-sized squares as well as vertical and horizontal rectangles in the hard-edge style, works she later expanded into multipartite arrangements as diptychs and triptychs.

The most prominent feature of her paintings of that era is her composition of white or grey central areas encircled by a very thin band of colour which in turn is surrounded by a considerably thicker band of black. In these works it was important to not consider the black paint as a frame nor the white as the centre. Both white and black were the frames for the colour - black functioning to enclose it on one side and white on the other, white pushing colour far enough apart to work as it did. Baer used the perceptual principle of Mach Bands: while the eye sees a band of darkness within a black area and of lightness within the light area, the contrast is accentuated. The sharper the border between contrasting areas, the more pronounced are the bands (= the negative of the the second derivative, i.e. the rate of change of the rate of change). Mach Bands are perceptual illusions, but exact and measurable, objective ones.

Baer describes her early ambition to make "poetic objects that would be discrete yet coherent, legible yet dense, subtle yet clear." The artist produced what she called a radical redefinition of painting by arguing that the root of painting was neither flatness, nor colour, nor shape. She placed the emphasis entirely on light.

While other painters composed their paintings part by part, Baer created her paintings as units that had to be arranged in enormous calculable numbers of variation (factor x!) At the height of her fame Jo Baer turned away from Minimalism. In 1975 she left New York, went to Ireland, later to London and then to Amsterdam where she introduced images to her painting. In her well-known article "I am no longer an Abstract Artist" published in the magazine Art in America in 1983 she explained her new approach to "radical figuration" as a means of leaving the formal self-centredness of Minimal Art behind and granting the subject and its reality a place in the painterly illusion.

The night before Christmas

2011-12-09T13:20:00.001Z

When I was younger my little sister Catherine got mickeys christmas carol on video, and this amazing little cartoon was on it too. Catherine must have watched it everyday before school until spring time. My whole family know it by heart :)

Paul Wackers

2011-12-08T21:27:00.001Z

How awesome is Paul Wackers work, this is what he says about it....
"My work is first a response to the world and then a reaction to what it has to offer. Images surround me as abstract concepts, presented by the curious interaction of forms, feelings, and situations. They offer a glimpse into the way the world is constantly being reloaded with opportunities and options for reinterpretations and impressions. It might start with a beam of light passing through a window in the afternoon and that within that beam there is the potential of a full spectrum to appear. In my paintings I try to create the feeling of getting lost in the thoughts that are easily ignored or put aside. Many of my paintings will come from moments seen in films or articles read in the newspaper or simply from a walk down the street. The images tend to be of non-places where the specifics of them are not important but how the elements within the picture interact as parts of another world that is sometimes jarringly familiar to our own. It might be seconds away from becoming reality or lifetimes in the past as a fleeting memory."

Rivane Neuenschwander

2011-12-08T16:36:00.001Z

I went to IMMA to check out the work of the internationally admired Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander the exhibition covers a decade of her work. A Day Like Any Other highlights her unique contribution to the narrative of Brazilian Conceptualism and reveals her wide ranging, interdisciplinary practice that merges painting, photography, film, sculpture, installation, collaborative actions and participatory events.

I didn't know anything about her work before I saw the exhibition, and when I walked in to the installation 'the conversation' I knew immediately what the work was referencing. “The Conversation” is titled after Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 movie starring Gene Hackman as a paranoid surveillance expert.

“The Conversation” (2010, installation), has an intriguing back story. Before her show opened, Ms. Neuenschwander hired a private security firm to “bug” a section of the gallery. She then hunted for the tiny listening devices by ripping up the carpet and wallpaper. Visitors can survey the trashed room and listen to the sounds of Ms. Neuenschwander’s search through small speakers attached to the original surveillance points.

I also did work referencing this film.

Museums as playgrounds.

2011-12-06T11:10:00.001Z

I came across this interesting article via Newyork Entertainment

Museums as playgrounds.By Jerry Saltz

J’accuse museums of bullshit! Of bogusly turning themselves into smash-hit consumer circuses, box-office sensations of voyeurism and hipster showbiz. This year, the institution-critiquing art known as Relational Aesthetics—essentially audience-participation art, often work that moves, lights up, or involves living nude beings—entered its decadent phase. Many museums are drawing audiences with art that is ostensibly more entertaining than stuff that just sits and invites contemplation. Interactivity, gizmos, eating, hanging out, things that make noise—all are now the norm, often edging out much else.

I place the beginning of the end at “theanyspacewhatever,” the 2008 Guggenheim group show of “subversive” critiques that remains the most indulgent act of museum masturbation I’ve ever seen—and I lived through the Thomas Krens years. This year, though, the movement went completely moribund. Take as an example Marina Abramovic’s The Survival MoCA Dinner, staged last month for more than 750 people at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. This piece of mega-kitsch included naked women, supine with skeletons atop them, on dinner tables while attendees ate. (One guest reportedly wisecracked “full Brazilian at six o’clock.”) Shirtless male pallbearers carried shrouded bodies about. Although it was only a fund-raiser, it recalled Abramovic’s silly 2010 MoMA spectacle that made sitting and staring at the artist into the narcissistic endurance art du jour. (A group of art-world scolds, including Yvonne Rainer, Douglas Crimp, Mary Kelly, Rachel Harrison, and John Yau, all signed a peevish letter denouncing Abramovic’s L.A. event before it was staged. That too came off obnoxious—less thoughtful critique than thought-policing. These exhibitions bring out the worst instincts in everyone.)

Right now in New York, there’s the New Museum’s Carsten Höller fun-fair of rides, slides, and flotation tank, most of it restagings of past amusements. The show packs the house; viewers feel pleased with themselves for “getting it”; nothing provides much in terms of form, social commentary, or the willful transformation of materials. It’s arty junk food. Last summer saw Allora & Calzadilla’s unctuous Venice Biennale spectacle, which included U.S. Olympic gymnasts performing atop wooden models of airline seats and a model of Freedom (the statue atop the U.S. Capitol’s dome) resting on a tanning bed. It would be impossible to imagine anyone getting anything from these works, except briefly distracted. Back at MoMA, Carlito Carvalhosa’s fossilized-on-arrival atrium installation included sound, hanging microphones, and a meaningless labyrinth of material hung from the ceiling. Viewers walked through this thing as numb as cows in a Temple Grandin chute, led into psychic oblivion. (MoMA is also now showing the defining work of Relational Aesthetics, a re-creation of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 1992 feeding-the-audience piece, though I love this work and don’t begrudge its return. Unlike the others, it still ignites the mind, the space, and seemingly all who partake and interact there.)

Some observers respond that blockbuster shows are all broadly appealing: “Monet and Cézanne are as easy to like as Allora & Calzadilla.” I’d respond that Monet and Cézanne are not at all easy to like, and that they complicate your life, in the best way. Allora & Calzadilla, et al., go down smooth and just make your life simpler, in the worst way. It’s a vacuous vicious circle, ostensible populism masquerading as collectivity. All of it says that too many museums now equate happy crowds with quality and experimentation. These shows serve the museums, curators, and trustees. They no longer serve art. In fact, this sensationalism implies that many museums have now fallen behind art.

Louise Butler

2011-12-05T12:16:00.001Z

Louise Butler's practice flows easily between 2D and 3D work, with painting at the foreground, where new landscapes are revealed and idealised places appear. Here the artificial blends with the organic in sublime and uncanny ways. Louise’s investigations of surrounding landscapes, from her locality, to lands further a field, finds undiscovered new worlds that now become exposed. However, these new discoveries make her more aware of the human interventions that are marking the landscape. The idea that nature has become mediated by tourist attractions, explaining where the best places to experience nature from, thus turning the wilderness into an object to be consumed, interests her also. The more controlling human presence telling us what we should want from nature, the more we want the pure untouched ‘original’ version of nature.

'Middleground'

2011-12-02T13:14:00.001Z

I am in a group show at the moment called 'Middleground' in NGG Gallery, 12 East Essex Street, Temple Bar. It runs from 2 - 22 December 2011.
It is part of First Thursdays Dublin, it's a collection of new works from recent DIT graduates,including myselfKim Crilly, Lisa Heavey, Emma Hogan, Dylan Lennon, Eoin ODowd and Stephen Toomey.

Phillip Allen

2011-11-26T12:15:00.001Z

I went to visit the Kerlin Gallery yesterday and I was curious as to what artists they represent so I looked on their website and Phillip Allen is one of them. I just love his work. Phillip Allen’s (British, 1967) paintings depict an imagined space which is always framed at the top and bottom by luscious rosettes of thick paint that allude to the idea of a paradisiacal garden but also to paint itself and its sculptural qualities. From the empty centre of each painting springs a form or pattern or many forms and patterns that play with colour and perspective suggesting a depth of space and a fantastical architecture that is at once intriguing and playful.

Couple of new paintings

2011-11-21T12:08:00.001Z

'Marriage'Oil on panel25x35cm

'Place'Oil on panel25x35cm

DAVID NOONAN

2011-11-20T11:10:00.001Z

DAVID NOONAN fuses image with image in evocative and uncanny treatments of materials, objects and figures. Noonan reworks archival photographs of people, places and events to produce an almost cinematic sense of shared time and space. His paneled sculptures, bleach paintings, collages, silk-screens, wallpapers and films intrigue and disquiet with their compelling convergence of myth and realism. Noonan’s work explores the inner workings of memory, connotation, and sentiment. His amalgams of documents and textures resonate with a psychic force, producing fictional histories and imaginary landscapes that provoke, disquiet, and charm.

Leader of the pack!

2011-11-17T12:52:00.001Z

Clyfford Still was a leader in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II. Although not as widely known as some of his New York School contemporaries, Clyfford Still was the first to break through to the new and radically abstract style devoid of obvious subject matter. Still was also considered one of the foremost Color Field painters - his non-figurative paintings are non-objective, and largely concerned with juxtaposing different colors and surfaces in a variety of formations. Still's progression to purely abstract painting in the mid-1940s predated and influenced a similar move to non-representational art by his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries.

Eoin Llewellyn

2011-11-13T13:31:00.001Z

Eoin Llewellyn currently works between Ireland and Berlin, Germany. In 1998, Llewellyn earned a degree in Fine Art from the Dublin Institute of Technology, which is where I studied.

Over the last fifteen years his work has explored numerous aesthetics and artistic philosophies, drawing on close study of the works and techniques of certain painters from the past 500 years. His initial interest in neo-expressionism led to his fusing large paintings with installation works which explored similar themes to give a richer experience to the viewer.

Revok

2011-11-12T17:46:00.001Z

I found this great video (via Graffuturism) for Revok's upcoming Solo show in Hamburg Berlin next Month. The show titled “Triumph and Tragedy”.

REVOK / TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY / VICIOUS GALLERY / DEC. 3RD from WWW.REVOK1.COM on Vimeo.

Andreas ragnar kassapis

2011-11-11T10:59:00.001Z

Beautiful paintings by Greek artist Andreas ragnar kassapis

New painting

2011-11-10T11:43:00.000Z

'theoffice'
Oil on panel
25x35cm

Group show

2011-11-09T11:48:00.000Z

This is a new painting for a group show entitled 'MIDDLEGROUND' I will be taking part in. It will be showing at the NGG Gallery, 12 East Essex Street, Temple Bar on Dec 1st.

'Windows'
Oil on panel
25x35cm

Jack Frost

2011-11-07T12:35:00.000Z

I woke up to a frosty morning today...bbbrrrrrrrrrr

This is such a great little cartoon about Jack Frost! (1934)

Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Are Made for Walkin'

2011-11-04T22:51:00.001Z

Tim Hecker

2011-11-03T12:35:00.000Z

Im into this Tim Hecker record.....Dropped Pianos.

Eamon O’Kane's paintings

2011-11-01T12:25:00.000Z

Irish painter O’Kane employs both meticulous quasi-realism and expressive, gelatinous abstraction in depicting half-imagined architectures. Hinting at the ghosts of their makers as much as the perceptual itinerary of their inhabitants, O’Kane’s new series fuses Modernist glass, steel, and concrete archetypes into psychologically and visually lush inversions of time, space, boundaries, and histories.

NIGEL COOKE

2011-10-28T13:11:00.000+01:00

I have always really liked NIGEL COOKE's work, I love his balance of abstraction and realism ,'he works on an epic scale but dwells on the minutiae of decay and dissolution, he paints with scientific accuracy but creates scenes that could never exist. '

Jacob Dahlgren

2011-10-22T12:52:00.000+01:00

I love this guys work..I came across this artist last year when I was researching for my sculpture, I lost his name but rediscovered it today. Jacob Dahlgren is a Swedish painter, sculptor, and conceptual artist who works to a large extent with unconventional materials. Finding abstraction in everyday objects, he creates dynamic interactive installations and performances.

How clever is this performance piece by him (Performance with 300 people dressed in striped T-shirt in a shoppingmall in Stockholm 2005)

Marcel Dzama

2011-10-21T19:10:00.000+01:00

Marcel Dzama is a contemporary artist who lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited internationally, in particular his ink and watercolor drawings. Dzama also works extensively in sculpture, painting, collage, and film. The artist is also known for his intricately conceived dioramas and large scale polyptychs that draw from his talents across a range of media. Dzama works in multiple disciplines to bring his cast of human figures, animals, and imaginary hybrids to life, and has developed an international reputation and following for his art that depicts fanciful, anachronistic worlds.

Couple of new paintings

2011-10-20T17:36:00.000+01:00

I have been engrossed in spy movies (and tv programs) lately, taking inspiration from the look and feel of them I made these paintings.

'on the run'
25x35cm

'tourist'
25x35cm

Michaël Borremans

2011-10-17T14:20:00.000+01:00

Michaël Borremans is a Belgian painter and filmmaker who lives and works in Ghent. His painting technique draws on 18th century art as well as the works of Édouard Manet and Degas. The artist also cites the Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez as an important influence. His earlier drawings, many of which belong to the collection of fellow painter Jan Van Imschoot, are often used as a basis for his later paintings. In recent years, he has been using photographs he has made himself or made to order sculptures as the basis for his paintings.

Shepard Fairey/ATP coverage on NJ TV

2011-10-13T12:23:00.000+01:00

Shepard Fairey Paints Asbury Park from Adam Worth on Vimeo.

Spotted this short via Jonathan LeVine Gallery. It's by Adam Worth... features Shepard Fairey and Jonathan LeVine discussing their recent exhibition REVOLUTIONS: The Album Cover Art of Shepard Fairey, presented in association with All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) I'll Be Your Mirror music festival in Asbury Park, as well as a series of murals the artist created on site.

Nicholas McLeod

2011-10-10T11:55:00.000+01:00
Nicholas McLeod......(via ebandflowgallery)

'My work is concerned with exploiting the tension between subject matter and the application of paint. I am interested in exploring how different techniques and painterly styles can affect the overall atmosphere and mood of the painting.
I am intrigued with photographs of abandoned places, crime scenes and wastelands and feel that the ambiguity and banality which I see in them is a potential for painting. When these elements are taken to painting they are drawn into a conflict between the ordinariness of what is being depicted and the monumentality of what may have occurred there.
I see the poured paint as a kind of curtain or veil which acts as a device by which the forms are hidden, distorted and bleached out. The decision process then begins to revolve around what is revealed and what remains hidden.These attempts to de-stabalise the image are intended to disrupt the work and bring me closer to the tension and discomfort I hope to achieve.'

Fiona Rae

2011-10-09T10:30:00.000+01:00
Fiona Rae's bold works evolve from the loosest of blueprints, making the flexibility of oils central to her process. Via the The Observer she says.....

What I love about painting is that it embodies a series of thought and feeling processes. It's all there on the canvas as a record. I can put something on the canvas, consider it, adjust it, remove it, replace it, add to it, conceal it, reveal it, destroy it and repair it. I can be in a good mood, a bad mood, a cheerful mood or a destructive mood - it's all useful.

I came across this video of her in her studio, I love when artists talk about their practice with such conviction and passion.

Matthew Lyons

2011-10-07T12:12:00.000+01:00
I came across this illustrator Matthew Lyons via Juxtapoz . I'm really into his work...the textures and colour he uses work wonderfully.

Andrew Wyeth

2011-10-03T14:12:00.000+01:00
Andrew Wyeth..one of my favorite painters. I would love to behold one of his actual paintings.

Stefan Kürten

2011-10-01T12:49:00.000+01:00

While doing a little research on Stefan Kürten I found that he exhibited here in Dublin in the RHA and I missed it..I hate when that happens.
Kürten's works are distinguished by a striking tonality that is achieved through the use of a gold or silver base coat at the beginning of each painting. Images of suburban houses, gardens and yards such as Spellbound and Weites land are outlined in black before the different elements are painted in. Increasingly the artist has also used the repeating pattern of domestic wallpaper or carpet in his paintings, the contrasting flourishes accentuating the rigid lines of the suburban home.

Yo La Tengo - Our Way To Fall

2011-10-01T11:00:00.000+01:00

What a tune....this came on my itunes when it was on shuffle...Yo Le Tengo will always be a huge favorite of mine.

Delta

2011-09-30T11:01:00.000+01:00
Boris Tellegen's sculptures draw heavily from both architecture and design. Dutch artist Tellegen aka DELTA was a pioneer of the European graffiti scene in the 1980's. His sculptures are the unison of physical versions of his graffiti tags and expertly drafted architectural drawings. I came across this artist when I was researching for my sculpture/painting last year. I love his work..it's such a amalgamation of influences.

Check out this installation video.

exothermic from over x growth on Vimeo.

Dexter Dalwood

2011-09-29T13:04:00.000+01:00
I am really looking forward to the Dexter Dalwood talk happening in connection with Dublin Contemporary. It is on at The National Gallery of Ireland @ 10.30 AM 11 Oct, 2011....check out his work .....

Dexter Dalwood’s collages and paintings typically depict imagined and constructed interiors or landscapes. These are usually devoid of figures and act as memorials or descriptions of various historic people, places or moments.

I like this interview with Dalwood (2010 via Tateshots

Damien Flood

2011-09-28T11:59:00.000+01:00
Damien Flood's work is situated between fact and fiction. The paintings are modern landscapes that reference the history of painting with an underlying fantastical element. A fleeting familiarity can be found in the work that is soon replaced by an ambiguous questioning.Gathering imagery from varied sources, the artist is particularly interested in the research trips of the nineteenth century that explored the oceans and 'new territories'. The illustrations gathered on these voyages evoke an otherworldly feel; although they are of actual plants and creatures, they contain a mystery and scepticism. It is this notion of the undiscovered, the other, the foreign landscape that Flood searches for within his practice.

I seem to be attracted to darker palettes lately, like the colours in Damien Flood's work ..it could be that autumn has arrived. I went to check out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the other day, wow it was great...it looked so beautiful too. I would recommend it.

Pakayla Biehn

2011-09-23T14:01:00.000+01:00
I was browsing around Artistaday and I came across Pakayla Biehn.I'm really into her Double Exposure Series....I like the layering of figures creating nice movement in the paintings.

Pakayla Biehn’s most recent body of work concerns her congenital vision disability, called Strabismus. Her eyesight consists of mutually exclusive images trying, unsuccessfully, to bond into a cohesive impression. She uses her own embodied identity as a starting point for her paintings and installations. Her goal is to find a visual language to negotiate the intersection of imagery and create a similar perspective to give the viewer an understanding of her own optical condition.

Damien Tran

2011-09-23T10:32:00.000+01:00
Tran is a freelance graphic designer and screenprinter, currently living in Berlin, Germany.He works with the screenprint collective Mehr Siebdruck. I think his posters are incredible..i love the colours and layering.

Thee More Shallows

2011-09-22T16:26:00.000+01:00
Another great band with Anticon I would recommend......Thee More Shallows

David Fulford

2011-09-22T14:40:00.000+01:00
I came across David Fulford at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool when I was looking through the John Moores 2010 catalogue.

'Near the site'

One aspect of his painting over the past three years has involved an exploration of the portrait. In recent work Fulford has been drawn to elements of biography and the images that surround an individual. By interpreting and reconstructing imagery from the past, he creates oblique narratives that concern a desire for a sense of connectivity.

Peter Broderick '4 Track Songs'

2011-09-21T17:27:00.000+01:00
In his earliest days as a recording artist, Peter Broderick assembled two CD-Rs based on sketched recordings committed to tape with old, worn-in microphones. The discs were labeled "4 Track Songs" and got bundled off to Type Records' headquarters. Here is a beautiful short track from this called Piano & Rain.

Liverpool

2011-09-21T17:03:00.000+01:00
I was away in Liverpool this week checking out some art. I was at the Walker Gallery and saw a Peter Doig painting, which I was excited about. It is titled 'Blotter'.

I went out to Crosby beach to see Antony Gormley's Another Place. Another Place consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size figures spread out along three kilometers of the foreshore, stretching almost one kilometre out to sea. Contractors spent three weeks lifting the figures into place and driving them into the beach on the-metre-high foundation piles. The Another Place figures each one weighing 650 kilos are made from casts of the artist's own body and are shown at different stages of rising out of the sand, all of them looking out to sea, staring at the horizon in silent expectation.
The work is seen as a poetic response to the individual and universal sentiments associated with emigration - sadness at leaving, but the hope of a new future in another place.

Jane Eyre

2011-09-17T14:25:00.000+01:00
I went to see Jane Eyre yesterday...I really enjoyed it...it looked so beautiful. It gave me some ideas for my paintings too which is great because I am in dire need of some inspiration at the moment.
The story is about Jane Eyre who flees Thornfield House, where she works as a governess for wealthy Edward Rochester. The isolated and imposing residence and Mr. Rochester's coldness have sorely tested the young woman's resilience, forged years earlier when she was orphaned. As Jane reflects upon her past and recovers her natural curiosity, she will return to Mr. Rochester - and the terrible secret that he is hiding...

Gigi...... Maintenant

2011-09-16T10:50:00.000+01:00
Ive gotten into this album....Gigi is a Canadian music recording project, based in Vancouver, formed in 2005 by songwriter Nick Krgovich and record producer Colin Stewart after Stewart got possession of two vintage plate reverb units and asked Krgovich to write songs— Phil Spector-inspired 1950s and 60s-style pop music—to make use of them. With 40 musicians from indie rock bands collaborating, the group released its debut album, Maintenant, on the label Tomlab in 2010, to mostly positive reviews. check out the Pitchfork review here.

This is my fav song.........

Amanda Blake

2011-09-16T10:37:00.000+01:00
Today I thought I would post the beautiful work of Amanda Blake......Inspired by religious and literary symbolism, art history, superstition and found photography she works to create narratives that are at once familiar and mysterious. Her paintings often features groupings of figures; families, couples, siblings, friends, both to explore the dynamic that can be created in a piece through small gestures and glances and to create a narrative people can identify with emotionally. Current obsessions and inspirations include imaginary friends, consumerism, superstition, fortunetelling, wildflowers, places she's never been and never plans on going to, the colors of faded Polaroids, and other people's family snapshots.

Check out her shop.

Alice Neel

2011-09-13T16:25:00.000+01:00
I visited the Alice Neel exhibition at The Douglas Hyde Gallery today. Well worth the visit.

Alice Neel (1900-1984) was one of the most remarkable American artists of the 20th century. Best known for her intense portraits, Neel was never especially fashionable or in step with avant-garde art movements; pursuing her own path and sympathetic both to the expressionist tradition of Northern European painting and the darker aspects of Spanish art, she worked in a style that was distinctly her own. Although widely admired in her lifetime, Alice Neel's paintings have only recently begun to receive the attention they deserve, and this is in no small part due to the impact of the recent retrospective of her work, Alice Neel: Painted Truths, organised by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which travelled to the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and the Moderna Museet, Malmo.

Diana Copperwhite

2011-09-13T09:44:00.000+01:00
Copperwhite is an artist whose work is concerned primarily with memory. Her subjects are identifiable, sometimes drawing on media images and at other times from her own experiences, but she plays with lighting and colour to create a slightly unreal dreamlike quality. The mood of her work is generally lyrical and soft with liquid layered surfaces that create an air of ambiguity. She works over recognisable images, working and reworking the surface so that objects that take on the fluid quality of being remembered rather than frozen in real time.

Diego Vallejo

2011-09-12T11:33:00.000+01:00

Vallejo's homesteads appear lonely and dark to me.. as if in a horror film...I love the delicate technique and palette.

Aaron Horkey Posters

2011-09-12T10:46:00.000+01:00
Aaron Horkey was birthed and reared deep in the heart of the Rural Midwest, specifically the small farming community of Windom, Minnesota. Key personality traits include debilitating social ineptitude and a perverse attention to detail. Also, believes himself to have been born 100 years too late. Enjoys desolation, megafauna and transplanting sumacs. Currently ensconced in a bucolic whistle stop just west of the Mississippi, he whiles away the hours writing of himself in the third person, staring at his chore list and cultivating ulcers. Fully prepared for and welcoming a long languishing into obscurity, Aaron is the sole survivor of the Black Osprey Dead Arts Society and founding member of the Cottonwood County Druids Skateboard Gang. Previous clients include INIT Records, Cougar Den, Flip Skateboards, Playge, The Blinding Light, ISIS, Converge, Neurosis, Boris, Andrew Bird, Grails, Genghis Tron, Spitfire Wheels, SOS Press, Fat Possum Records, Deathwish INC, Hydra Head Records, Bruce Horkey's Wood and Parts, Agenda, Big Brain Comics, Cable, Flight of the Conchords, Mogwai, Ride Snowboards, Magic Bullet Records, Khanate and 420X10 Records. Published in the following periodicals: Thrasher, Concussion, Sea of Seed, Color, Monster Children, Juxtapoz, Ollie, Free & Easy and Low.

Craola

2011-09-10T10:38:00.000+01:00

I love watching vids of Craola paint....he makes it look so easy.

Sarah Crowner

2011-09-09T18:17:00.000+01:00

Sarah Crowner is a Brooklyn-based artist whose vibrant sewn paintings have been based on specific compositions from the past, such as early works by Victor Vasarely and Lygia Clark. In two concurrent shows this fall, Crowner presents new work that amplifies her previous methods while setting them on a new course. “Acrobat” opens at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York on September 7 and “Ballet Plastique” opens at Galerie Catherine Bastide in Brussels on September 11.

Night of the hunter

2011-09-09T10:14:00.000+01:00
Myself and my friend Sarah watched Night Of The Hunter the other night...I love this film....its really dark.
Robert Mitchum plays Harry Powell, a preacher who roams the countryside looking for potential victims for his holy man con. He believes God is putting people in his path for exploitation (his faith isn’t the con), but plays on the expectations of others with a mighty Tent Revival voice and commanding tales of good vs evil illustrated by the tattoos on his fists.

The Seventh Letter

2011-09-08T17:07:00.000+01:00
Perseverance – Revok, Rime and Roid at Known Gallery, LA

Alison Elizabeth Taylor

2011-09-07T12:25:00.000+01:00
Alison Elizabeth Taylor is known for creating biting social critiques executed through the exquisite craft of marquetry, or wood veneer inlay. Taylor, who is a recent MFA graduate of Columbia University School of Art, creates narratives that offer insight into America by investigating the distractions of contemporary culture such as sex, video games and luxury SUVs. The artist’s combination of marquetry, often associated with luxury and the reign of Louis XIV, and the ideologies of American life, further underscores the opulence of our time.

2011-09-07T11:34:00.000+01:00
This is another recent painting ...again a juxtaposition of three scenes from the film Hanna (2011)

...entitled 2.09-3.04. Painted in acrylic and oils on panel.

Mamma Andersson

2011-09-06T23:20:00.000+01:00
Mamma Andersson's paintings depict domestic interiors, lush landscapes, and genre scenes just welcoming enough to allow their otherworldly air to take hold. Her work is imbued with beguiling narrative zest and frequent references to the stage and everyday settings as well as to works by other artists. Both familiar and mysterious, most of Andersson's works include images of recognizable paintings by other artists as peculiarly placed accessories.

Gonzales

2011-09-04T14:48:00.000+01:00
What a nice soundtrack for the rain outside my window. The rain here seems never ending!

Liz Miller

2011-09-04T13:43:00.000+01:00

Liz Millers mixed media installations and drawings recontextualize simplified shapes, signs and symbols from disparate historical and contemporary imagery to create abstract fictions. Existing forms from a multitude of sources are co-opted, altered, and spliced to adopt hybrid identities. Through the process of appropriation and subsequent recombination, shapes lose their real-world connotations and take on fictitious roles. Forged relationships between benign and malignant forms confuse the original implications of each while revealing the precariousness of perception and how easily it can be tampered with. Recent projects pit Baroque and Gothic pattern and ornament against forms derived from armor and weaponry. Seemingly oppositional pairings create duplicitous environments where conflicting messages are conveyed. The use of felt, foam, and other tactile materials further complicates questions of source, masking the identity of forms while allowing them to inhabit both sculptural and two-dimensional space.

Shabazz Palaces

2011-09-01T19:07:00.000+01:00
Really like these guys!

Anthony Fantano at Theneedledrop gives their album Black Up a good review.

Studio

2011-09-01T18:56:00.000+01:00
Work in the studio is slooooooow...but getting there....here is a painting i have been working on...this is a juxtaposition of three scenes from the film Three Days of the Condor (1975)

...entitled 13.42-13.44. Depicted In these scenes.... a CIA researcher hears all his co-workers being shot dead from inside the restroom moments before being killed himself. Painted in acrylic and oils on panel.

Léon Spilliaert

2011-08-28T11:52:00.000+01:00

Léon Spilliaert (28 July 1881 – 23 November 1946) was a Belgian symbolist painter and graphic artist.

From childhood he displayed an interest in art and drawing. A prolific doodler and autodidact, he was predominantly a self taught artist. Sickly and reclusive, he spent most of his youth sketching scenes of ordinary life and the Belgian countryside. When he was 21 he went to work in Brussels for Edmond Deman, a publisher of the works of symbolist writers, which Spilliaert was to illustrate.

Watercolor, gouache, pastel, and charcoal—often in combination—were the means by which he produced many of his best works, among which are a number of monochrome self-portraits executed in the early years of the twentieth century. A significant influence on Spilliaert was Odilon Redon, whose expressive use of black finds parallels in his own work. Frequently depicting a lone figure in a dreamlike space, Spilliaert's paintings convey a sense of melancholy and silence.