Year: 2015

The Kitten and the Man

Photographer Unknown, (The Kitten and the Man)

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens,  The Portable Atheist

Claudio Bravo Camus

 

Claudio Bravo Camus: Six Paintings

Born in 1936, Claudio Bravo was, until his death in 2011, arguably the most prestigious Chilean painter of his time. A hyperrealist who was heavily influenced by Renaissance and Baroque artists, Bravo is best known for his portraits, still-life paintings, and his series of tied packages. His artwork also included drawings, lithographs, engravings and small sculpture.

After gaining international recognition as a successful society portraitist in Madrid, Bravo moved to New York for a short period in which he held multiple exhibitions. After eleven years in Madrid, Bravo moved to Morocco, where he created two magnificent homes filled with fine art, furniture and objects. Both homes stimulated him creatively and, on occasion, became the theatrical setting for his paintings.

Bravo spent the last 30 years of his life living and working in Morocco, which was to heavily influence his later work.

 

 

George Towne

Paintings by George Towne

Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Port Jervis, New York, George Towne realized he loved drawing as a young man, and often found himself copying caricatures out of old Mad Magazines. After his high school art teacher bought him his first set of oil paints, he began to study work of the old masters, especially Caravaggio, Velasquez and the American painter Thomas Eakins.
Towne came to New York City 20 years ago to attend the School of Visual Arts to study painting and find a like-minded community. His artwork has been featured in solo exhibitions at venues such as the Michael Mut Project Space in New York
City, The Barbara Ann Levy Gallery, in Cherry Grove, on Fire Island, and the
Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, in Narrowsburg, New York.
Towne’s work has been highlighted in several group shows, including recent ones in both locations of the Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, at the Forbes Gallery on 5th Avenue, and the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park.
George Towne has settled in New York’s East Village neighborhood, and has continued with his love of painting depicting male images as well as his love of landscapes and cityscapes.

Donald Pass

Etchings and Paintings by Donald Pass

Donald Pass was a British painter and visionary artist whose art has often been compared to that of William Blake by reviewers. He is known for work based on a vision he experienced, which has been interpreted as the Resurrection of the Dead. His work is found in museums and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Australia.

Born in Congleton, Cheshire, Donald attended the King’s school in Macclesfield. He then enrolled at Burslem College of Art in 1947, from where he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Art in London. When he was called up for national service, a medical examination found that Donald’s eyesight was poor. He instead began teaching art at Walsall Art College, moving to Drake Hall Prison in Stafford, where he managed to establish art on the curriculum, and later to Liverpool College of Art where John Lennon was one of his students.

Glen Duncan: “In My Dreams, a Wolf Slept Inside of Me”

Photographer Unknown, (In My Dreams), Selfie

“In my dreams a small wolf slept inside of me and it wasn’t comfortable. It moved it’s heels and elbows and paws, struggled to make space between my lungs, stomach, bladder. Occasionally a scrabbling claw punctured something and I woke.  … It was dreaming of being born. The form and scale of its occupancy shifted. Sometimes its legs were in my legs, its head in my head, its paws in my hands. Other times it was barely the size of a kitten, heartburn hot and fidgety under my sternum. I’d wake and for a moment feel my face changed, reach up and touch the muzzle that wasn’t there.”

―Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf

Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson, “Bad Dog”, 2013, Fiberglass, Orange County Museum of Art

Born in 1939, Richard Jackson has been a pre-eminent figure on the American art scene since the 70s and is influenced by both abstract expressionism and action painting. As part of his retrospective at the Orange County Museum of Art, Jackson had installed “Bad Dog”, a giant temporary sculpture of a black labrador “urinating” yellow paint onto the side of the museum.

The sculpture of the giant naughty pup leaving its golden mark on the building is made of 52 digitally cut pieces of fiber glass and composite materials that were assembled on-site. Once the structure was intact, Jackson entered the sizable sculpture with a bucket of yellow paint to be splattered on the wall. Now, the mechanized sculpture squirts a stream of yellow paint on its own. It is one of Jackson’s many “painting machines” that excretes pigments in an unusually creative fashion.