Monday 4 June 2012

Painters who love clothes and pattern

I've been busy trying to finish some mixed-media drawings recently, and also been thinking about starting to paint again soon (and have a studio again!) - more on that later, but until then here are some painters I've come across recently which have inspired me - each of them have a special way in dealing with colours, pattern and fabric in their paintings. 


Will post some finished work soon - happy jubilee weekend x 


Michael Carson (For bio and more work click here)


Image from the fashionmedly.files.wordpress.com

Image from Canary Public Relations
Malcom Liepke ( for bio and more work click here )

Image from ledeluge.files.wordpress.com
Milt Kobayashi  (For bio and more work click here)



Gari Melchers (For bio and more work click here)

Image from polarbearstale.blogspot.com

 

Saturday 5 May 2012

Random thoughts...(or my head feels like a Cy Twombly painting)

Been in and out of the 'zone' these last couple of days - which sometimes feels like a precarious place to be - one moment 'eureka!' and you just get 'it', the next amnesia....what was all that fuss about? Who knows, but it's all part of the privilege of being an artist I think.
Cy Twombly - Hero and Leanda (1985) image uploaded from Pinterest - original source unknown.

If I could paint the inside of my head on a good day I would like to think it would look like this Cy Twombly painting. Will upload some work-in-progress soon...happy weekend, A x

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Collections & Obsessions - 'Drawing'

Here's a few of the recent artists whose drawings I have come across lately on the web and been collecting on Pinterest, and some long-time favourites;
Uploaded from marienouvellestudio.blogspot.co.uk
Really loving the beautiful work of Izziyana Suhaimi - a delicate mixture of drawing, watercolour and embroidery. 


Uploaded from www.frameweb.com 
Margherita Manzelli is an intriguing figurative painter whose work I have followed since I came across it unexpectedly at an exhibition in Florence. I really love the delicate line in her drawings (and the slight freakishness!).


Uploaded from artist's website www.shanemcadams
The artist describes this as a painting but I love the delicate mark-making/line drawing in these works; created with ball-point pen on resin.


Uploaded from www.booooooom.com
Check out more of this Illustrator/Painter Joao Ruas on www.feral-kid.com. I love the overlapping and layers within this drawing.


Bree Dentice - uploaded from www.booooooom.com
This drawing is called 'Bunny Up-chuck' and not only does the artist have a great name but thinks up great titles - I especially like it for the physical discomfort it brings to mind juxtaposed with the delicate detail of the drawing.
Uploaded from artist's website www.mercedeshelnwein.com
One my favourite drawings from Mercedes Helnwein's exhibition 'whistling-past-the-graveyard'(2008)- a collection which comprises of detailed drawings mainly of stylishly dressed women in strange ambiguous scenes. 


uploaded from artist's website - www.henriksimonsen.com
This is a painting by artist Henrik Simonsen but I love the lines within it so I had to include it here - created with oil and charcoal on canvas. 


uploaded from rikrawling.wordpress.com/
George Shaw is one of my favourite painters so I thought I would include one of his drawings. Slightly more fluid than his paintings they capture the moodiness and unexpected beauty in the surroundings.


You can follow my collections on Pinterest; http://pinterest.com/atheballerina/drawing/
   

Monday 30 April 2012

A little road trip

"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door" Emily Dickinson.


Often it feels like sources of inspiration come from anywhere and everywhere but whilst on one hand they feel random, the images that move me most often link in to each other forming little road-trips into a larger journey of investigation. 
A still from Tideland  -  image uploaded from Allmoviephoto.com
'Tideland'(Terry Gilliam, 2005)- The opening scenes depict the main character, an enchanting child Jeliza Rose, cooking up heroin for her addict parents - rarely can I watch this film as a whole and often fast forward through various sections but'Tideland' is a visual feast and one in which I found references and connections to some of my favourite artists.
Image uploaded from Moma.org
The painting 'Christina's World' (1948) by Andrew Wyeth is for me one of the most arresting images from the last century. It's filled with emotional intensity created by the vast sense of open space and the ambiguity of the figure 'Christina'. This painting inspired Mitch Cullin who wrote the novel'Tideland'.

 'House from the Railroad' (1925) uploaded from Wikipaintings.org
Echoes of the house from Hitchcock's 'Psycho'(1960) appear in 'Tideland' but Hitchcock was directly inspired by the painting above - 'House from the Railroad' by Edward Hopper. 
Still from 'Psycho' uploaded from Planetvideo.com.au
Hopper's paintings of figures are rarely of close-ups causing the viewer to be psychologically distanced. His paintings are like film sets with a sense of space and emptiness. Director Todd Haynes translates these characteristics into his film 'Safe' (1995) below.


Todd Haynes 'Safe' image uploaded from www.jonathanrosenbaum.com
Gregory Crewdson photographs are of a cinematic scale and depict American small town scenes with slightly sinsister and ambiguous narratives. He is influenced by film-makers Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Todd Haynes.
Gregory Crewdson from 'Twilight' series - uploaded from artsytime.com




  

Thursday 19 April 2012

Painting Updates - Paper Doll Series

Progress on the painting front has been slow lately but my struggle with acrylics has continued and here are my first few attempts at some hand-painted patterns;


Playing around with vintage colour schemes


After hours of intricately cutting and piecing together - one almost-finished Paper Doll; 





Wednesday 11 April 2012

Collections & Obsessions - Part 1 'Street Art'

I think I spent too much time over the holiday weekend pinning images on 'Pinterest'. For those who haven't yet discovered this ever-so addictive virtual pinboard it is a godsend for categorizing and collecting images of all kinds. As an artist this is pretty handy as I'm not a naturally organized person and I usually forget many artists/images that I come across, but for some reason when it comes to Pinterest I have suddenly developed some kind of OCD for categorizing. Perhaps I can take this sudden but much awaited for compulsion to good use and start to sort out my not-so-virtual art research collection...


In the meatime a tiny selection of Street Art:


I find myself drawn to more and more street or urban artists without really knowing much about the history or culture behind it. Aside from the aesthetics, I mostly love the scale, how it challenges our sense of [public] space and how we interact with the pieces on a day to day level.


Image from www.streetartutopia.com
I discovered the work of Herakut -street artist duo Hera and Akut  (above and below) in a book shop in Covent Garden and fell in love with Hera's drawings but also the combination of the duo's differing styles. Akut spray paints the photo-realist elements which make Hera's drawings even more hard-hitting and raw.



Image from www.streetartutopia.com


Swoon's poetic pieces incorporate paper cut outs and wood block prints. The fragility is emphasized further by the delicate and impermanent nature of the medium and it's inevitable exposure to the outside elements.  


Image from www.allcitystreetart.com


 On a grander scale is the work of French Street Artist and photographer 'JR' - a project in the slums of Rio which involved pasting photos of women throughout the favela. The women's faces portray the stories of their struggles and suffering. 


Image from www.maymagazine.eu


Image from www.superpunch.blogspot.co.uk
Finally, I love the work of Dan Witz's trapped people above. Photos of people behind a grate are then placed in a fake grate giving the impression of someone trapped. Seriously cheeky prankster....check out his website for figurative paintings of mosh pits and other portraits www.danwitz.com.


You can follow or check out my Street Art pinboards on the following link; https://pinterest.com/atheballerina/street-artists/ 

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Sunday afternoon sketchbook photos

A visit to the park - flashes of red running through the trees.
Grace just wouldn't remove her bunny head - she even went to sleep in it
Messing around with instagram

A Sunday afternoon at my mum's house and then the park with my niece Grace. She turned up in a cute little red-cord pinafore with kitty detail on the pockets and this pink bunny hat/head which she refused to remove even for bed - we removed it when she was asleep!  

Friday 30 March 2012

'Kindred Spirits' and inspiration


I’ve been working on something on and off for the last year and I'm not sure where it's going. At the moment there's a plan for a series of work called ‘Kindred Spirits’. The ideas are loosely connected to the concept of kindred spirits and also the idea of daemons such as in the Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’. The trilogy had a huge effect on me because reading them reminded me what it felt like to read as a child. The books asked the kind of questions that both children and philosophers ask - how and why we exist and where we go afterwards. Pullman's daemon is the soul's physical manifestation in the form of a creature which represents consciousness, acting as an inner dialogue and therefore a conscience. 


Work-in-progress for Kindred Spirit (drawing 1)

My first image is of a girl with the head of a rather vicious looking wolf on her head. Parallels with Red Riding Hood may come to mind, although there are many readings of that tale that don't really interest me here. Instead I prefer the view of the Native Americans, who consider the wolf to be the highest spiritual teacher of all animals. The wolf is a symbol of strength, loyalty and protectiveness. In "His Dark Materials" the daemon (until adolescence) can shape-shift into an animal which most reflects the emotions,situation or wims of its human.   


            Kindred Spirit (Drawing 1)


These are just some of the concepts and ideas which are running around inside my head for this particular work but how they are interpreted is entirely up to the viewer - please feel free to post comments, Angela x


Wednesday 28 March 2012

Inner worlds, fairy tales and make-believe

This is something I wrote ages ago but looked at again recently. It's (very) loosely based on Red Riding Hood, childhood imaginings and subversions and is written more as a stream of consciousness - kind of a way to get ideas out of my head and on paper. The images are of some of the  paintings which I did around the same time.


A Fairytale


She prays for something interesting to happen - days full of sun and laughter and the magical light from rainbows and dreams coming true. She is a girl unspoilt by love and longs for romance and fairy tales without realising their true horror. She is a child inspired by make-believe and pink dresses that rustle as she runs through the forest which grows out of her imagination....


             "The Wish" 


There she runs as silently as the breeze searching for the wolf. She draws her cloak around her tightly as the mood shifts and she sees the witches' hats moving in the distance. Twilight approaches fast, the magic hour, and she hears their shrill voices against the soft whisper of the wind through the trees.


As death plays around the corner she wonders if the wolf can smell her heart beating. In the menacing darkness the forest is haunted by black inky hues and children's nightmares and she knows if she strays into the realm of lurking wolves and preying witches she will be lost forever. But just as the wolf gets ready to pounce the keys on the piano begin to play like a dream coming true and through a gap in the trees a golden carriage pulled by 6 white horses flashes past like reality restored.


The carriage is filled with rose-wreathed princesses on their way to a ball but they throw her a wish and suddenly she is an enchantress, slaying dragons and turning witches into stardust, ruling her empire with wishful thinking and rainbows.


                  "The Enchantress"


As if by magic the forest is filled with a thousand butterflies and she follows their whispers of a promised getaway. She passes the house where the witches live, luring little children with the smell of fairy cakes and cute little kittens but she knows she must not stray from the path this time.


                  A study: "Make-believe Child"


As she flees the forest she can see the sky once more, the sun setting like a huge bloodstain in a pool of water - her face is pale and bewitched, there are flowers woven into her hair and her heart beats like the wolf's.


The End. 






  



Tuesday 13 March 2012

Studio playlist for sunny times

Today I am listening to;


Bon Iver - Blood Bank
Feist - 1234
Frank Sinatra - Moon River
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Gotye - Somebody that I used to know
Emily and the Woods - Stealing your heart
Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
Beck and Bat for Lashes - Lets get lost


On replay - Gotye

Monday 12 March 2012

Interludes, new beginnings and the smell of paint



I am full of the joys of spring today! The sun has been shining all day and more importantly I was free to go art material shopping and to work on some new drawings - a rare start to the week indeed.

Having left my studio earlier this year I am enjoying a little interlude at the moment. It's not nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be after 9 years of having a specific place to paint and whilst I miss the social aspect of working in an artist complex I particularly miss the smell of paint. I opened my paint box this weekend and drank in the delicious and slightly toxic smell of oil paints and had a massive pang of homesickness for painting. 

And then something quite amazing happened. One of those moments where things fall into place after a  a period of trying to move things on and not quite getting there...I (re)discovered acrylics. I've always said I hate working with acrylics - they don't really smell of anything for a start and they dry so quickly but that's also why they're so great! I hang my head in shame to all of my artist friends who have tried to tell me this so many times before. 

At the moment I am working on a series of work called "Paper Dolls" which is loosely based on the idea of the paper dolls I played with as a child; 




Also, I came across these beautiful drawings of Rodarte designs in Lula Magazine (issue 11) by Jenny Mortsell.


These are some of my drawings I did at the start of this project mixing patterned paper with drawing;




  

Below are what I am working on at the moment and they are either a duo or a trio (depending on whether or not I have the patience to complete a third). I imagine being almost identical that they are pretty impish pair and they certainly don't look particularly angelic. The clothes I have designed myself but instead of using patterned paper I will be handpainting the pattern. I look forward to having some to share very soon. In the meantime please feel free to leave comments, X