Andrea Rich

Andrea Rich, “Thistle”, 2001, Woodcut on Hosho Paper, 50.8 x 60.1 cm, Edition: 4/30; Collection of Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin

Since 1980, internationally recognized woodcut printmaker and artist Andrea Rich has traveled the world observing wildlife in their natural habitat. Madagascar, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Africa and Europe are some of the places outside North America that she has visited in search of interesting subjects. She then designs her drawing based upon personal observations in the field, carves and hand-pulls prints in her studio in Santa Cruz California.

A typical print requires ten to twenty blocks. Working in the studio full time, a print could take two or three weeks to design and carve the blocks, and another two weeks to press as many as 20 colors on each print. Editions of her work generally number 30 or less.

Paul Beel

Paul Beel, “Stefano with Wood”, O2000, Oil on Canvas, 90 x 100 cm, Private Collection

Paul Beel received his BFA and MFA from the School of Art at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He did Post-Baccalaureate work at Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy, where he later taught painting and drawing.

Beel has had solo shows in Venice, Milan, Florence, Mantova, as well as in the US, and group shows in Spain, Germany, San Marino, Switzerland, London, and throughout Italy. He now lives and works in Germany.

Gyula Tornai

Gyula Tornai, “The Holy Cleansing of the Samurai”, Oil on Canvas, Date Unknown, Private Collection

Gyula Tornai was born in 1861 in a small town in Hungary known as Görgö. He began his artistic career seeking a formal education in the academies in Vienna, Munich and Budapest where he studied under prominent artists such as Hans Makart and Gyula Benczúr.

Tornai’s style was heavily influenced by Makart’s aestheticism and tonality known as Makartstil (“Makart’s style” in German). The vibrantly colored and theatrical, large-scale paintings held a lasting effect on Tornai and are evident in the complex nature of many of his works.

Tornai began his career painting numerous genre scenes, however after his travels to more exotic locales, his choice of subjects changed dramatically. His early visit to Tangier, Morocco, in 1890-91, provided him with new motifs to explore.

In 1900 he exhibited many of the works he completed abroad at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Their immense success provided Tornai with the financial ability to continue his explorations and provoked him to travel for an extended period of time through China, Japan and India. Tornai often designed the frames for his paintings to complement the subject matter.

Thanks to http://monsieurlabette.tumblr.com for the image.

Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado, “Papua New Guinea”, Silver Gelatin Print, 2008

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of this work have been presented throughout the world.

Salgado is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in 1982, Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in 1993.

Salgado and his work are the focus of the film “The Salt of the Earth” (2014), directed by Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. The film won a special award at Cannes Film Festival.

Thanks to http://providenzia.tumblr.com.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, “Conceptio Artis”, 1894, Oil Paint and Gouache on Paper, Finnish National Gallery

Akseli Gallen-Kallela was a Swedish-speaking Finnish painter who is best known for his illustrations of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. His work was considered very important for the Finnish national identity. He changed his name from Gallen to Gallen-Kallela in 1907.

In December 1894, Gallen-Kallela moved to Berlin to oversee the joint exhibition of his works with the works of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Here he became acquainted with the Symbolists. The Paris Exposition secured Gallen-Kallela’s stature as the leading Finnish artist. In 1901 he was commissioned to paint the fresco, “Kullervo Goes to War”, for the concert hall of the Helsinki Student’s Union.

From December 1923 to May 1926, Gallen-Kallela lived in the United States, where an exhibition of his work toured several cities and where he visited the Taos art-colony in New Mexico to study indigenous American art. In 1925 he began the illustrations for his “Great Kalevala”. This was still unfinished when he died of pneumonia in Stockholm on 7 March 1931, while returning from a lecture in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Many to http://cevans75.tumblr.com from whom I reblogged the image. Visit his blog.

Victo Ngai

Illustrations by Victo Ngai

Victo is a New York based illustrator form Hong Kong. She graduated from Rhode Island School of Design majoring in illustration. Her work has been described as being highly detailed and precise, referencing comic book drawings, classic children’s book illustrations, the work of Japanese painters, and more. Victor Ngai has also taught athe the School of Visual Art in New York, the illustration Academy and other workshops and conferences.

Pawel Klarecki

Photography by Polish Artist Pawel Klarecki

“I have always seen the world as pictures and frames I love landscapes and the natural world. Long walks along with photography give me a lot of satisfaction – this is my small world, seen with my very own eyes. Sometimes it may seem surreal and messed up, but these are in fact, pieces of my imagination mixed with breathtaking landscapes, the very miracle that is nature.

I was lucky enough to live on the spectacular coast of Northern Ireland. It is a true paradise for a landscape photographer, an amazing and perfect place to capture and show the beauty and the power of nature.

The important thing I need to mention is the constant search for the perfect light and atmosphere. In my case it all differs. Sometimes the pictures are colorful, other times they are grayish with a flash of light. It all depends on what’s going on in my head at this particular moment. But I am always striving for that perfect element of light and how it impacts on my photography.” _Pawel Klarecki

Luigi Benedicenti

Realism: Paintings by Luigi Benedicenti

The work of Benedicenti is deeply rooted in the still-life tradition that sprouted in Europe in the late XVI century, embodied by such masters as Bosschaert the Elder and Bruegel the Elder, whose accurately descriptive paintings were often employed for scientific purposes. Notwithstanding Luigi Benedicenti has a strong independent personality which cannot be fully explained through the prism of his precursors.

After having deeply meditated on their works, absorbed the symbolic value, Luigi moved away from this genre. He came up with a completely new style, what the critic Claudio Malberti defined as ‘Realismo Estremo’ or ‘Extreme Realism’. Benedicenti replaces the fish and meat that used to decorate the dining rooms of the leisure class with contemporary Italian patisserie, ice cream and classy drinks.

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper, “French Six-Day Bicycle Rider”, 1937, Oil on Canvas, 43.8 x 48.9 cm, Private Collection

In the 1800s, the invention of the safety bicycle initiated a cycling craze in America. Designed by English engineer Harry John Lawson in 1878, the first model of the ‘safety bike” was unlike previous bicycles in that the rider’s feet could reach the ground, which made it easier to stop. The pedals powered the rear wheel and kept the rider’s feet safely away from the front wheel. The chain drive allowed for much smaller wheels and replaced the need for the directly pedaled front wheel of previous bicycles. Although the smaller wheels gave a harsher ride, the introduction of pneumatic tires, which replaced the previous solid ones, overcame that disadvantage.

Edward Hopper as a teenager in his hometown of Nyack, New York, was an avid cyclist. The freedom of both cycling and drawing freed him from the confines and boredom of small town life in the 1890s. During his early years, Hopper drew many bicycling scenes, two of which are “Study of a Man in the Bike Shop”, the interior of a bike shop whose owner is working on bike tires, and “Meditation: 10 Miles from Home”, a self portrait standing in knickers and argyle socks, staring at his bike’s flat front tire.

The inspiration for Hopper’s 1937 “French Six-Day Bicycle Rider” came from his watching bicycle races in New York’s Madison Square Garden. He remembered the rider, young and very French in appearance, who was resting while the his team mate was on the track. Early sketches for the painting show slightly different perspectives. In his notes for the final painting, Hopper chose to use the perspective from his 1921 etching, “The Night Shadows”, which depicts a street scene seen from an upper window.

In his painting, Edward Hopper simplified the scene and focused on the emotional isolation of the rider. Strong diagonal lines cut across the scene. The young male assistant, whose slender form contrasts with the muscular rider, is shown opening the sleeping curtain. Bicycles on the left and right balance the scene which includes details from a biker’s kit: a helmet hung on a peg and a water bottle near the French flag on the hut’s roof. Next to the bicycles in the foreground sits a bucket containing a bottle.

Hopper finished the oil on canvas painting on March 5, 1937.

Christian Rohlfs

Christian Rohlfs, “The Village”, Oil on Canvas, 1913

Christian Rohlfs was born in Gross Niendorf, Kreis Segeberg in Prussia. He took up painting as a teenager while convalescing from an infection that was eventually to lead to the amputation of a leg in 1874. He began his formal artistic education in Berlin, before transferring, in 1870, to the Weimar Academy.

Initially Rohlfs painted large-scale landscapes, working through a variety of academic, naturalist, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist styles. In 1901 he left Weimar for Hagen, where the collector Karl Ernst Osthaus had offered him a studio in the modern art museum he was setting up there. Meetings with Edvard Munch and Emil Nolde and the experience of seeing the works of Vincent van Gogh inspired him to move towards the expressionist style, in which he would work for the rest of his career.

Michal Karcz

Digital Photography by Michal Karcz

Some artists get to the point when their usual medium or technique starts to limit their visions. This is exactly what happened to a Polish artist Michal Karcz who found that painting and the ordinary dark room photography techniques didn’t allow him to fully realize his potential.

Born in 1977 in Warsaw, the graduate of the High School of the Arts was first passionate about painting. However, in the early 90’s, he became drawn to photography only to realize that the dark-room techniques alone were almost as limiting as the paintbrush and canvas. Luckily, the developing technology allowed him to combine the two with the help of some digital tools.

“This digital photography and software gave me the opportunity to generate unique realities that are impossible to create with ordinary dark room techniques.” – Michal Karcz

Jacques de l’Ange

Jacques de l’Ange, “Chained Prometheus”, c. 1640-1650, Oil on Canvas 52 x 62 cm, Private Collection

Jacques de l’Ange or the Monogrammist JAD (fl. 1630 – 1650) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman known for his genre scenes and history paintings executed in a Caravaggesque style. The artist was only rediscovered in the mid-1990s as his work was previously attributed to other Northern Caravaggists and in particular those of the Utrecht School.

Taha Alkan

Taha Alkan, “David’s Bow”, Computer Graphics

Born in Sivas, Turkey in 1984, Taha Alkan is a graphic artist, digital painter and art director. He studied architecture at Uludag University in Bursa, Turkey, from 2004 to 2009. Alkan worked as a professional CG artist in the United States and as an art director with EAA-Emre Arofat in Turkey. He founded the Volumetrik Creative Workshop.

Alkan uses a multi-discipline design approach to provide creative digital artworks and 3-D visuals, as well as architectural designs. He has taken part in multiple exhibitions in New York, the Netherland, and Turkey.

Jose Daniel Cabrera Peña

Jose Daniel Cabrera Peña, Two Illustrations for Jason and the Argonauts

Osprey Adventures, a new division of Osprey Publishing, has just released a new edition of Jason and the Argonauts with illustrations done by Jose Daniel Cabrera Pena.

Jose Daniel Cabrera Peña is a Spanish born, self taught traditional and CG 2D artist. His work is focused on historical and fantasy editorial illustrations, concept art for computer games and mattepainting in animation movies.

Some of the projects Jose has been involved with include the Sony CEA God of War game series, Ubisoft/Redstorm Ghost Recon game series, Wizards of the Coast Magic the Gathering, George R.R. Martin’s World of Ice and Fire illustrated book, Games Workshop codex books, and Osprey Publishing books.

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio “David with the Head of Goliath”., circa 1610, Oil on Canvas, 125 x 101 cm, Borghese Gallery and Museum, Rome

David with the Head of Goliath is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio. It is housed in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. The painting, which was in the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese[a] in 1650] has been dated as early as 1605 and as late as 1609–1610, with more recent scholars tending towards the former.

The immediate inspiration for Caravaggio is a work by a follower of Giorgione, c.1510, but Caravaggio captures the drama more effectively by having the head dangling from David’s hand and dripping blood, rather than resting on a ledge. The sword in David’s hand carries an abbreviated inscription H-AS OS; this has been interpreted as an abbreviation of the Latin phrase Humilitas occidit superbiam (“humility kills pride”).