Today on "Artists You Should Know," we're taking a look at some of the people who I've not only known, but have given me wond
erful guidance and advice as a young artist. The three artists I'll be discussing were teachers of mine at SUNY New Paltz, all of them sweet, lovely, and immensely talented and smart.
The painting seen here is Big Whoop by Robin Arnold, and features her awesome mouse character. Robin is pure awesome. Her critiques were always on point, and she always seemed to know what we were trying to say with our paintings and how we should go about expressing ourselves more clearly. I have a special appreciation for her work because, like mine, it deals with nostalgia and the eerie-but-comforting and always inescapable qualities of memory. Unfortunately (for me), hers is the only site that actually allows me to reproduce an image here.
Up next is Audrey Francis, whose work is bright and moving, and deals with identity, the body, and more. I did probably the best painting (The Council) I did in the entirety of my college career in Audrey's class. I'm not sure that she still works for the college, but her site is great and you should check it out. I particularly like the "Santos" section, as it appeals to my cultish qualities. That body of work was done, as she put it, "a lifetime ago."
Finally we have Kathy Goodell, whose name I can never remember to spell correctly (the spelling here is right). Kathy taught Water Media and Collage and was the kind of person who made you feel totally comfortable explaining your weirdest, most convoluted art concepts to. She also can be seen in the documentary Crumb, having once dated cartoonist Robert Crumb. Really. But more important is the vast scope of her work, which utilizes a wide variety of materials and methods to create forms and images that speak at once to the universe at large and the dark human interior. Working with beeswax, glass, found objects and wood as well as watercolor and pencil, she captures deep and complex emotions in organic shapes and lines. Her website is arranged by body of work, so you can easily see the concepts of her pieces.
Check them out!
Normally I sketch in preparation for a larger project--they're like maps to the image in my head and they don't make a lot of sense on their own, and I typically include lots of little notes that amuse only me with arrows pointing to things and such. But here's one that I liked on its own. It's after the medieval fashion, and features intrigue, as usual.
I also made a video sketch, which came out looking like Kurt Cobain. It was unintentional, and I didn't realize it until it was done, thinking instead that I was drawing a sad Viking. I would have uploaded the video here, but Blogger and/or my Internet connection wasn't having it. I actually like the video itself more than I like the drawing, which is kind of meh.
Kurt Cobain would have made an excellent sad Viking.
In other news, I went to a farm the other day and farms are very good for artistic inspiration. Lots of homey things, and fields and fat birds. I have some sketches drawn up for possible future paintings. Hurray!
Finally an oil painting!
This is Big Wind, which is actually the title of a song by Myshkin's Ruby Warblers (but that is not, sadly, up on YouTube), but it seemed apt for this painting. It's oil and collage (dyed leaf skeletons) on fabric and is the first of a subseries within the Home series. This subseries, "Storm Country", is based on the Little Apocalypse monotype series, specifically on one print bearing the same name.
The idea is the decay of Americana, and the future of what was once the promised land. The three paintings star two exterminators, who I've been calling Sarah and Miranda without knowing which is which, who live in a blighted landscape of severe weather and the fossils of the homesteaders who went before them. Here's one of them taking daily meteorological measurements, gauging the day's weather. The thermometer/barometer set-up, the pinwheels, the sunflower and birdhouse are taken directly from the print. The whirligig, next to the pinwheels, is modeled on one I saw on Antiques Roadshow one time.
Appropriately, it is raining violently and occasionally hailing as I write this.
Welly, welly well, it's been a while. That's okay though, because that means I have a job and can't sit around on my computer all day.
It also means I've been shamefully remiss about painting, though things are under way and I'm hoping to complete them before the sun becomes a red giant and swallows the earth. (Although at that point, who cares?) I haven't even really been doing any watercolors, having been feeling rather uninspired lately. Here, however, are some pieces I put on my deviantART account but not here.
Up first is a group shot of me and most of my alter-egos. One more came out of the woodwork after this picture was completed, but you'll get to meet her soon. From left to right is an exterminator, a skullhead (a sugar skullhead, to be precise), me, a skullhoodie, and a surgeon.
Next is Beast Boy and his new necklace, because even Beast Boys need to feel pretty sometimes. I really enjoy painting teeth like that.
Both were done with the usual mix of watercolors, watercolor pencils, gouache, ink and colored pencil.
erful guidance and advice as a young artist. The three artists I'll be discussing were teachers of mine at SUNY New Paltz, all of them sweet, lovely, and immensely talented and smart.
