Month: October 2015

Orley Ypon

Five Paintings by Orley Ypon, Oil on Canvas

Orley is a Filipino realist painter from Toledo, Cebu, Philippines. He discovered a love for art at a very early age, doing portraits of himself and of family and friends throughout his growing years.

The 39-year old artist has achieved much since his young years. A constant finalist in painting exhibitions in the Visayas and Metro Manila, Orley gained attention when he won the First Prize in the Art Association of the Philippines’ National On-The-Spot Painting Competition in 2001. In the same year, Orley made his mark at the Art Petron National Painting Competition, bagging the Grand Prize in 2001 for “Ober-Ober”.

He won the Grand Prize in the same competition for the second time in 2004 for “Pamaling”, earning him the honor of being the first Hall-of-Famer in the history of the Art Petron Painting Competitions. In 2008, Orley won the 2nd Prize in the GSIS Painting Competition for his piece, “Ahon”, considered by peers and critics to be a breakthrough creation for its adherence to traditional technique but showing depth and variety in the artists’ choice of subject and composition. It showed an evocative nature previously unseen in his earlier work.

His current creations manifest the artist developing his objectives into themes that convey social issues, the human condition, and further expanding into new dimensions of his art. His latest achievements are winning First Prize in the Figurative Category of the 2012 Art Renewal Center International Salon, the Grand Prize in International Artist Magazine’s International Painting Competition in the People and Figures Division for 2009,  and the Grand Prize in the Amorsolo National Painting Competition in 2011. He was also recently given the Ani Ng Dangal award in 2011, an honor given by the National Commission of Culture and Arts of the Philippines.

Osho: “You Are No Longer a Sheep, You Become a Lion”

Photographer Unknown,(Above the Crowd in the Morning Sun)

“The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.”

― Osho, Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously

Queen and Adam Lambert, “We Will Rock You”

Queen and Adam Lambert, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” at the New Year’s Eve Concert in London 2014

Queen + Adam Lambert (sometimes referred to as Q+AL or QAL) is a collaboration between the active members of the British band Queen (Brian May and Roger Taylor) and American vocalist Adam Lambert. As with all other Queen performances since 1997, original bassist John Deacon has declined to participate in the project due to his retirement. This is the first long-term collaboration of Queen since the Queen + Paul Rodgers project ended in 2009.

The collaboration originated when May and Taylor appeared on American Idol in 2009 when Lambert was a contestant. They began performing occasionally in 2011, conducted a short European tour in 2012, and in 2014 announced a world tour, the Queen + Adam Lambert Tour 2014–2015 with dates in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe.

The band performed a special concert, Queen + Adam Lambert Rock Big Ben Live, which was broadcast live on BBC One on New Year’s Eve 2014 and New Years Day 2015. The concert was performed in the shadow of Big Ben in Central Hall Westminster, and the show paused for the chimes of the Big Ben in the New Year countdown and the firework display in London.

Jun Kaneko

Ceramics by Jun Kaneko

In 1942 Jun Kaneko was born in Nagoya, Japan, where he studied painting during his high school years. He came to the United States in 1963 to continue those studies at Chouinard Institute of Art when his focus was drawn to sculptural ceramics through his introduction to Fred Marer. He studied with Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Jerry Rothman in California during the time now defined as the contemporary ceramics movement.

Kaneko established his third studio in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1990 where he primarily works. He has also created work in several experimental studios including European Ceramic Work Center, Otsuka Omi Ceramic Company, Fabric Workshop, Bullseye Glass and A.S.A.P. He created series of large-scale sculptures from 1982-1983 at his Omaha Project, from 1992-1994 at his Fremont Project in California and currently at his Mission Clay Project in Kansas. He produced a large Dango series of ceramic pieces resembling vases without openings. (Dango means “dumpling” or “closed form” in Japanese.) His prolific roster of diverse work appears in numerous international solo and group exhibitions annually.

Kaneko’s technique involves the use of masking tape and colored slips, which he uses to covers free-standing ceramic forms and wall-hung pieces with graphic motifs and markings. He frequently favors the large oval plate as one his sculptural formats, which serves as a canvas for arrangements of straight, curving, and spiraling lines, creating an interplay of abstract imagery on a three-dimensional surface.

My thanks to http://laoguang.tumblr.com for sharing this artist. Visit his blog for more images.

Jen Mann

Paintings by Jen Mann

Jen Mann is a Canadian artist from Toronto, Ontario. Mann’s dreamy, acrylic paintings are inspired by illusions and memories of her childhood. She experiments with a variety of different effects with color combinations and saturation to capture innocence and beauty.

“I am fascinated by the subconscious, the soul, identity, and the way they interact to form meaning and beauty, or nonsense everything and nothing. I am inspired by existentialism, history, language, and nature. In my newest series of works I challenge limitations to acceptable beauty. Limitations are death to creativity”.- Jen Mann

Paul Richmond

Paintings by Paul Richmond: “War Paint” Series

Ohio-based artist Paul Richmond is hoping to “investigate the construction of identity” and masculinity with his incredible new series. The “War Paint” series uses the symbolism of body painting to “challenge conventions around masculinity and the male form,” Richmond told The Huffington Post.

“The application of pigment is suggestive of their psychological states, the color of their self-made armor exposing more than it conceals,” Richmond said. The work is a considerable departure from his “Cheesecake Boys” series, which put a twist on gender stereotypes by casting gay men in classic pin-up poses.

“By deconstructing and rebuilding the figure, my goal is to invite understandings that reach beyond the immediate surface and reveal the complexity of the individual,” he added.

Christian Voigt

Photography by Christian Voigt

Born in Munich, Germany, Christian Voigt lives and works in Hamburg and The South of France. His current studio is situated in Hamburg. Voigt works with large-format cameras, both digital and analogue. He experiments with new camera techniques and makes the best use of the digital medium. In the museum edition, his large-format pictures can measure as much as eight metres in width; but his strictly limited editions come in various sizes for collectors.

Voigt continually works to refine a pictorial idiom, the stories he wants to tell, the feelings he convey. This is visible in his pictures; landscape and architecture are his principal areas of interest. Voigt’s series on the vanished architecture of the past and its appearance in our own times come across just as vividly as the craziness of today’s societies that his images depict.

“My pictures are created with the camera, not on the computer,” he says, with a reference to the complicated technology and processing that goes into his creations. “But without the computer technology of today, the pictures couldn’t be crafted into their final form.”-Christian Voigt

Solo shows and Art Fairs have been staged in Basel, Hamburg, New York, Los Angeles, London, Saint Tropez, Amsterdam, Madrid

Jacques Reatu

Jacques Reatu, “Le Vision de Jacob (Jacob’s Dream)”, Oil on Canvas, 1792, Museum Reattu, Arles, France

Jacques Réattu was a French painter and winner of the grand prix de Rome. He was an illegitimate son of the painter Guillaume de Barrême de Châteaufort and Catherine Raspal, sister of the Arles-born painter Antoine Raspal – Antoine gave him his first lessons in painting.

In Paris, in 1773 he was a pupil of Jean-Antoine Julien, then entered the Academy in 1781, with Michel Francois Dandre-Bardon as a patron, he was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. In 1790 he won the Prix de Rome, thanks to a work, currently exhibited at the National School of Fine Arts: Daniel faisant arrêter les vieillards accusateurs de la chaste Suzanne. Following anti-French riots of the Roman population, he fled to Naples, from where he could return to France.