Month: January 2017

Phil Greenwood

Phil Greenwood, “Morning Moon”, 1973, Lithograph, 40 x 47 cm, Private Collection

Phil Greenwood was born in Dolgellau, Wales, and studied at the Hornsey and Harrow Colleges of Art. He was taught by some of Britain’s finest contemporary artists – Ken Howard RA, Charles Bartlett RE, RWS and the late Christopher Saunders RA. After an initial career in teaching he became a full time printmaker in 1971 and has been exhibiting both nationally and internationally for the past forty years. He is widely acknowledged as one of the countries leading printmakers.

Phil’s extraordinary ability to capture and convey the atmosphere of a landscape is fundamental to his work. His economical use of colour is heavily belied by rich and vibrant pieces that are exquisitely designed. With quiet mystery he is able to portray both the complexity and simplicity of natures double-edged personality and beauty.

With work hanging in many private and public collections through out the world Phil regularly exhibits at the Royal Academy and the Bankside Gallery. He has also exhibited work at the British Embassy in Brussels, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery, London.

Fabien Mrelle

Fabien Mrelle, “Pentateuque”, Fiberglass Resin Sculpture, 2013

The work of French artist Fabien Mrelle involves creative combinations of dreams, experiences, and his early childhood imagination. He blurs the line between reality and fiction. In his biography, Mrelle states: “Following the unrolling of a dream, playing with the free association of shapes and ideas, he seems to say that everything is transforming, metamorphing, opening itself to the most diverse interpretations.”

The life-size version of Fabien Mérelle’s “Pentateuque” was exhibited in Hong Kong’s Statue Square Garden from May 21 to July 6 in 2013. Presented by Edouard Malingue Gallery, the five-meter-tall statue made of resin and fiberglass depicts an elephant balanced on the back of a man. The male figure was cast from the body of the artist himself, while the elephant is modeled after one at the Singapore zoo.

“The work brings to real life Mérelle’s imaginary world, which lies between a dream and the existent,” says Jennifer Caroline Ellis from Edouard Malingue Gallery. “It’s implausible, yet, one comes to question whether it’s conceivable.”

“Pentateuque” refers to the first five books of the bible and the sculpture humorously alludes to the human propensity for carrying the weight of the world on one’s shoulders, metaphorically bending over under the burden of religion, culture, and society’s expectations.

Lee Keasner

Lee Keasner, Untitled, 1949, Oil on Canvas, Signed and Dated “Lee Krasner ‘49′ on Reverse, Private Collection

Untitled is part of a series from the late 1940s called “Little Images”. Krasner made these paintings—none larger than three feet—while working on a tabletop in her bedroom. To make this work, she applied thick paint using repetitive strokes, often squeezing paint straight out of the tube. The resulting composition was an allover, gridlike structure filled with markings that look like symbols or letters.

Krasner had studied Hebrew as a child, but as an adult she no longer could read or write the language. Formally, she likened the indecipherable symbols in these paintings to Hebrew but insisted that she was interested in creating a language of private symbols that did not relate to one specific meaning.

David Garrett, “Palladio”

David Garrett, “Palladio”

David Garrett, born David Christian Bongartz, is a record-breaking German pop and crossover violinist and recording artist. By the age of seven, he studied violin at the Lübeck Conservatoire, and by the age of 12, Garrett began working with the distinguished Polish violinist Ida Haendel, often traveling to London and other European cities to meet her. After leaving home at 17, he enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London, leaving after the first semester.  In 1999 he moved to New York to attend the Juilliard School, in 2003 winning the School’s Composition Competition with a fugue composed in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach.[ Whilst at Juilliard he studied under Itzhak Perlman, one of the first people to do so, and graduated in 2004.

Palladio is a composition for string orchestra by Karl Jenkins, written in 1995. The title refers to the architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). The work in three movements is in the form of a concerto grosso.

“Palladio was inspired by the sixteenth-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, whose work embodies the Renaissance celebration of harmony and order. Two of Palladio’s hallmarks are mathematical harmony and architectural elements borrowed from classical antiquity, a philosophy which I feel reflects my own approach to composition.” -Karl Jenkins

Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio, Self Portrait, “Da Cattura di Cristo Nell’ Orto”, 1602,  National Gallery, Dublin

Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome, where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of Protestantism.

Caravaggio’s innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical, use of chiaroscuro which came to be known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value).

Maria Callas, “Il Dolce Suono”

Maria Callas, “Il Dolce Suono”, Performed in the Teatro Comunale, Florence, Italy, 1953

Chorus and Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Florentino

Chorus Master: Andrea Morosini

Orchestra Conductor: Tullio Serafin

“Il Dolce Suono” (“The Sweet Sound”) is the incipit of the recitativo of a scena ed aria taken from Act III scene 2, Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti. It is also commonly known as the “mad scene” sung by the leading soprano, Lucia. An arrangement of the aria was featured in the film The Fifth Element, sung by the alien character Diva Plavalaguna voiced by Inva Mula.

The Garage Mechanic

Photographer Unknown, (The Garage Mechanic), Photo Shoot

“The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child

Laura Bacon

Willow Sculptures by Laura Bacon

British Sculptor, Laura Ellen Bacon (born 1976) works raw materials into large-scale or ‘human-scale’ artworks, in both interior and landscape settings. Working with predominately natural materials and her bare hands, her works embrace, surround or engulf architectural and natural structures.

Her work has been described as ‘startling but beckoning’; ‘monumental yet intimate’; ‘frenzied yet calm’.  Laura’s particular use of materials emerges from a compulsive desire to work them into a formed space of some kind, using a language of materials that seems strangely familiar to the natural world.

“I began making my early works upon dry stone walls and evolved to work within trees, riverbanks and hedges, allowing the chosen structure (be it organic or man-made) to become host. I am still powerfully driven to create spaces of some kind and over a decade into my work, my passions continue to merge creatively with architecture.

The forms that I make have a closeness with their host structure or the fabric of a building; their oozing energy spills from gutters, their ‘muscular’ forms nuzzle up to the glass and their gripping weave locks onto the strength of the walls. Whilst the scale and impact varies from striking to subtle (sometimes only visible upon a quizzical double take), I relish the opportunity to let a building ‘feed’ the form, as if some part of the building is exhaling into the work.”