Representational & Figurative Art

Artist Reimagines Topographical Maps With Detailed Hand-Drawn Portraits

August 7, 2022 (updated August 7, 2022) Published by artistvenu

UK-based artist Ed Fairburn commemorates the connection between people and places in his unconventional illustrations. Using hand-picked maps from his collection, he carefully adds hand-drawn portraits to the topography of cities and landscapes, merging human figures with the environment.

“At its core, my work is loosely about coexistence,” he tells My Modern Met. “That can mean commemorating the links an individual has with a particular location, but it can also represent something much wider, shining a light on the similarities between ourselves and this place we call home—celebrating the way in which we are a product of the landscape, and recognizing how the landscape is increasingly becoming a product of us, our actions, and the choices we all make.”

Read the original article here…

Systems Evoking Roots and Veins Sprawl Across Raija Jokinen’s Organic Flax Figures

August 1, 2022 (updated August 1, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Image © Raija Jokinen

Finnish artist Raija Jokinen (previously) echoes the natural shapes of botanics and anatomy in her elaborately formed figures. The sculptural works are comprised of sprawling webs that appear like both root and vein systems, with flowers and more dense, fleshy patches emerging from an arm or torso. Each piece fuses the physical and mental, Jokinen says, sharing that her “approach is focused on everyday feelings, situations, and thoughts we all have.”

The mesh works are created from flax—Jokinen employs a technique similar to that used for handmade paper—that she dyes and molds into branches, twigs, and other organic forms.

Read the original article here…

Energetic Drip Paintings Imagine a Future Where Cities and Nature Are One

July 24, 2022 (updated July 24, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Many big cities have a reputation for being gray and industrial. But not in Amy Shackleton‘s world. The Canada-based artist imagines a future where cities and nature are connected. She creates vibrant acrylic paintings that merge architecture with organic landscapes.

Shackleton employs a drip painting technique—where paint is dripped or poured directly onto the canvas—to “achieve a natural energy in her work.” In fact, she achieves both the organic shapes found in the environment and the straight lines of modern buildings without the use of a paintbrush. Instead, she carefully directs the flow of paint and layers to achieve her mesmerizing designs.

Read the original article here…

Figures and Events Are Transfixed by Time in Pep Carrió’s Extensive Daily Visual Diaries

July 22, 2022 (updated July 22, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Image © Pep Carrió

In 2007, Madrid-based artist and illustrator Pep Carrió’s expansive diary project began as a challenge with a simple premise: to draw something every day. No matter what materials were at hand and without any predetermined theme or subject matter, he took a game-like approach to see if he could accomplish filling an entire Moleskine datebook throughout the year. The numerous editions that have followed feature a dazzling array of scenes fashioned from marker, pencil, tempera, pen, ink, collage, and found materials.

Carrió’s stream-of-consciousness process has led to a collection that ranges from abstract flora to silhouetted and patterned figures to surreal vessels and landscapes. Originally, the volumes contained one drawing each day with complementary images on facing pages, but in recent years, the artist has begun to more consistently fill the entire spread with a single image, creating bold compositions that play with the symmetry of the book and the confines of its edges.

Read the original article here…

Artist’s ‘Abstract Realism’ Paintings Capture the Wild Bond Between Women and Animals

July 21, 2022 (updated July 21, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Artist Dimitra Milan is something of a painting wunderkind. She’s been a professional artist since she was a teenager, encouraged by her artist parents and guided by her innate ability to combine realistic elements with colorful, ethereal settings. The alluring fusion is known as abstract realism. Each piece, with its recognizable forms and free-flowing elements, invites you to study and consider the color, symbolism, and technique.

Women and animals are two recurring characters in Milan’s work. “I always come back to this story of a woman with an animal,” she tells My Modern Met. “The women I paint are symbols, they represent our truest self where we know deep down anything is possible. Everything in nature has a deeper meaning beyond our surface understanding of its function, especially animals.

Read the original article here…

Discovering Rick Barton

July 14, 2022 (updated July 15, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Rick Barton, “Untitled (Inmates reading)” (1959), pen and ink, 10 1/4 × 14 1/2 inches. Rick Barton papers, UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles

I am not alone when I say that I had never heard of Rick Barton (1928–1992) before his exhibition, Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton opened at the Morgan Library & Museum. Kudos to Rachel Federman for curating a show on an unknown artist and diving deep into his work and life. I soon learned that Barton is either omitted from or mentioned in passing in well-known histories of the Bay Area Beat Movement. And yet, marginalized figures who are often recognized by only a few others during their lifetimes are apt, as Walt Whitman declared of himself, to “contain multitudes.” This is true of Barton, who attracted a small group of devoted followers, all committed to drawing as a daily practice. Little is known about Barton, who was part of the heady confluence of artists, poets, musicians, visionaries, crackpots, hipsters, pacifists, anarchists, and petty criminals, many of whom were queer, who gathered in San Francisco shortly after World War II. Although he went to and worked on drawings at the Black Cat Café and Fosters, hangouts for Bay Area artists and poets, he existed on the periphery of that group.

Read the original article here…

Vivid Oil Paintings by Kristof Santy Present Humble Meals as Bold Gastronomic Decadence

July 13, 2022 (updated July 13, 2022) Published by artistvenu

“Vismarkt,” oil on canvas, 240 x 200 centimeters. Images © Kristof Santy

Referencing Marco Ferreri’s mordant 1970s satire by the same name, La Grande Bouffe, or The Big Feast, saturates the simple foods found in pantries and fridges with unexpected grandeur. The solo exhibition on view at Unit London showcases vivid paintings by Belgian artist Kristof Santy that transform humble fare like a cheddar wedge or slice of watermelon into bright, gastronomic celebrations.

Often positioned against textured tile backdrops or striped wallpaper, the oil-based works tend to be either devoid of human life or portray figures in rigid stasis: a butcher stiffly lifts a broom in the shop doorway, a finger peels back a tin of fish with precision, and pans filled with sausages and other meats fry on a stovetop unsupervised.

Read the original article here…

A New Collection of Works by Collin van der Sluijs Channels a Dreamlike Collision of Emotion

July 7, 2022 (updated July 7, 2022) Published by artistvenu

In one of his most ambitious bodies of work to date, artist Collin van der Sluijs (previously) references two forces being incidentally forced together. “These strange times have caused a collision between me as a person and my work,” he shares, “I want to be free and not a puppet on strings directed by anybody.”

This sentiment pervades the Dutch artist’s latest collection opening this week at both Vertical Gallery and Vertical Project Space in Chicago. Aptly titled Collision, the solo show is broad in medium and subject matter, containing 15 canvas paintings, 12 on panel, and more than 50 works on paper.

Read the original article here…

Rego’s Girls

June 9, 2022 (updated June 24, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Paula Rego: The Bride, acrylic on canvas, 87 3/4 by 79 7/8 inches.

A retrospective of Paula Rego’s paintings was held at the Fundacião Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and the Casa de Serralves, Porto, before coming to the Serpentine Gallery, London, where a considerable number of new paintings were added. The exhibition revealed Rego to be a far more substantial artist than had previously been realized. Born in Portugal in 1935, Rego trained at the Slade School in London and married Victor Willing, a fellow student. Having for many years divided her time between England and Portugal, she now lives in London.

The spacious rooms of the Serpentine Gallery provoked Rego to work on a much larger and more declamatory scale than usual, making public statements rather than domestic observations in a series of new pictures that have the poise and solemnity of history paintings.

Read the original article here…

An Exhibition Unearths Rare Production Drawings from the Futuristic Neo Tokyo of the Anime Classic ‘Akira’

June 9, 2022 (updated June 24, 2022) Published by artistvenu

Akira, pattern no. 700, final production background Toshiharu Mizutani, poster color on paper, 26 x 37 centimeters

Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 sci-fi classic Akira has had an unparalleled influence on anime and film, and an exhibition at the Tchoban Foundation in Berlin showcases the original drawings that brought its futuristic cyberpunk setting to life. Akira – The Architecture of Neo Tokyo features 59 production backdrops, layouts, concepts, and image boards, many of which have never been shown publicly. The collection includes now-iconic works by art director Toshiharu Mizutani and collaborators Katsufumi Hariu, Norihiro Hiraki, Shinji Kimura, Satoshi Kuroda, Hiromasa Ogura, Hiroshi Ōno, Hajime Soga, Tsutomu Uchida, and Takashi Watabe.

Otomo first released the dystopian story as a manga series in 1982 before turning it into the highly influential action film a few years later.

Read the original article here…

Category: Representational & Figurative Art

Artist Reimagines Topographical Maps With Detailed Hand-Drawn Portraits

Systems Evoking Roots and Veins Sprawl Across Raija Jokinen’s Organic Flax Figures

Energetic Drip Paintings Imagine a Future Where Cities and Nature Are One

Figures and Events Are Transfixed by Time in Pep Carrió’s Extensive Daily Visual Diaries

Artist’s ‘Abstract Realism’ Paintings Capture the Wild Bond Between Women and Animals

Discovering Rick Barton

Vivid Oil Paintings by Kristof Santy Present Humble Meals as Bold Gastronomic Decadence

A New Collection of Works by Collin van der Sluijs Channels a Dreamlike Collision of Emotion

Rego’s Girls

An Exhibition Unearths Rare Production Drawings from the Futuristic Neo Tokyo of the Anime Classic ‘Akira’

Recent Posts