Month: May 2017

Peter Stewart

Peter Stewart, “Stacked”, Urban Architecture Series of Hong Kong

Some 7.2 million people live in Hong Kong, a region that covers 426 square miles. Cramming that many people into so small an area requires building up. And up. And up. Peter Stewart’s series “Stacked” provides a dizzying view of the high-rises most Hongkongers call home.

Hong Kong is renowned for its deep harbor and amazing skyline, which features more than 1,500 skyscrapers. The very tallest of them are office buildings, but even apartment buildings rise 250 feet or more, allowing those on the ground to see only slivers of sky through a canyon of concrete, steel, and glass. “Once you comprehend the reality of [Hong Kong], it really makes sense that the only way to to build is up,” Stewart says.

He’s photographed more than 300 residential towers. Stewart achieves his signature Point of View by finding the point midway between the buildings and aiming his digital camera straight up. A 14mm lens lets him capture the symmetry and repetition of buildings on both sides, and distorts the view to create an almost surreal image.

Stewart takes multiple exposures at various shutter speeds, blending them in Photoshop so the bright lights in the windows aren’t blown out against the darker exposure of the skyline. He also plays with color for a futuristic feel. Such “digital fakery,” as Stewart calls it, evokes a melancholic, almost dystopian mood.

Stephen Cefalo

Stephen Cefalo: Paintings

Stephen Cefalo is an American artist in the traditions of Symbolism and the Baroque.  He was born in the hometown of Albrecht Durer (Nuremberg, Germany) on the birthday of three of his his heroes, Winslow Homer, Charles Le Brun, and Franz Von Stuck, and felt a calling from early childhood to become a painter.

Denis Sarazhin

Denis Sarazhin, “Teatime”, Oil on Canvas, Date Unknown

Denis Sarazhin was born in Nikopol, Ukraine in 1982 . He attended the Kharkov Art and Design Academy, graduating in 2008. He specialized in painting and was a pupil of Ganozkiy V. L., Chaus V. N., and Vintayev V. N.. Sarazhin was awarded with the 1st Degree Diploma Award for Excellence in Painting from the Ukrainian Art Academy. Since 2007 he has been a member of Kharkov’s section of the association of Ukraine’s Artists’ Alliance.

Nepcetat Mask

Central Yup’ik, Nepcetat Mask, Arctic Region, 1840-60. Wood, Swan Feathers, Snowy-Owl Feathers, Fox Teeth, Sealskin, Thong, Reed, Blood, Pigment, Ochre, Charcoal: Fenimore Museum, Cooperstown, New York

In all the classes of masks, the nepcetat or nepcetaq mask is ranked highest, being the most powerful mask. Each mask could only be used by its owner, and another person could not just take it and use it as effectively. Although the angalkuq or shaman would place the mask on his face without a string to hold it there, it would adhere to his face and not fall off even though he would bow down.

Boje Ploeg, “Quincy Currie”

Boje Ploeg, “Quincy Currie”, Portrait of the Dutch Model

Boje Ploeg is a freelance cinematographer, based in Rotterdam, specializing in camera/lighting for narrative cinema, commercials and documentary style content.  He is known for his work on the 2016 “My Pleasure, the 2003 film “Sinterklaas en het Gevaar in de Vallei”, and the 2004 “Sinterklaas en het Geheim van de Robijn”.

Reblogged with many thanks to http://3leapfrogs.com

Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin, “Blue Roofs of Rouen”, Oil on Canvas, 1884, Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Switzerland

Paul Gauguin came to art late in life under the influence of the painters Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne. Beginning his career as a stock broker, Gauguin developed a strong interest in art, and following the market crash of 1882, decided to dedicate his life to painting. A champion of the cloisonnist style, Gauguin’s strong, constructive brushstrokes embolden his colorful paintings.

After spending the early years of his career in Brittany and Arles with his contemporary, Vincent, van Gogh, Gauguin struck out into the world, travelling to Martinique, Panama, and Tahiti. Over the course of his two trips to Tahiti, he was inspired by what he called the “savage” surroundings, and pioneered the French Symbolist and Primativist movements.

His many allegorical paintings and portraits of women evoke the erotic, mysterious aura that Tahiti held for him. Gauguin’s synthesis of Western traditions and “exotic” subject matter paved the way for the Fauvists and Expressionists that followed in his wake.

Amanda Shelsher

Ceramic Sculpture by Amanda Shelsher

Amanda Shelsher (born 1971,Western Australia) works as a full time sculptural ceramic artist from her home in, in Perth Western Australia. She grew up surrounded by bush in the small suburb of Gooseberry Hill and was introduced to clay at the age of 10 when her mother began her own career as a professional potter. Surrounded by both an artistic mother and father, Amanda was drawn into the world of ceramics and was firing and glazing works from this early age.

Amanda began exhibiting at age 18 and went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts – Ceramics at Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology. She then completed her Graduate Diploma of Education (Art – Secondary) the following year in 1992.

Karel Appel

Karel Appel, “The Crying Crocodile Tries to Catch the Sun”, 1956, Oil on Canvas, Guggenheim Museum

Karel Appel was a member of the Cobra group, which emphasized material and its spontaneous application. Although the group was short-lived, its concerns have endured in his work. The single standing figures of humans or animals he developed during the 1950s are rendered in a deliberately awkward, naive way, with no attempt at modeling or perspectival illusionism. Thus, the crocodile in this painting is presented as a flat and immobile form, contoured with heavy black lines in the manner of a child’s drawing.

Appel’s paint handling activates a frenzy of rhythmic movement the 1956 “The Crying Crocodile Ties to Catch the Sun”, despite the static monumentality of the subject. Drips and smears are interspersed with veritable stalactites of brilliant, unmodulated color that buckle, ooze, slash, wither, and thread their way over the surface. The physicality of the impasto and its topographic variety allow it to reflect light and cast shadows dramatically, increasing the emotional intensity of violent color contrasts.