Tag: art history

Andrew Sinclair

Andrew Sinclair, “Loki”

Andrew Sinclair ARBS is recognised as a master of world-class figurative sculpture. His impressive catalogue of work graces distinguished historical properties and public places such as the Royal Box at Ascot, Epsom Racecourse, and Crosby Hall (Sir Thomas Moore’s old palace) in London. Working to commission during his 25 year professional career, Andrew’s sculptures are in collections across the globe.

His talent extends across all genres of sculpture, from historic bronze re-creations for public spaces and private commissions, commemorative portraits for museums and industry magnates, to award winning fantasy sculptures such as dinosaurs and dragons.

Andrew’s passion is figurative sculpture and he has singularly changed the world of sculpture through his inventions: ‘The Sinclair Methodology’ for creating sculptures and ‘Plastishim’- a product used in mould-making, adopted by major foundries and the film industry as the method of choice.

Yoshitoshi Kanemaki

Skeletal Sculptures by Yoshitoshi Kanemaki

Based out of Chiba Prefecture, Japanese sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki carves life-size sculptures from camphor wood, but with a twist of mortality and transience. The disturbing pieces hinge often hinge on grotesque as the combination of the bulging weight and density of wood heightens the certainty of death that looms over all his creations.

Magical Staves

Magical Staves from Iceland

Icelandic magical staves (sigils) are symbols credited with magical effect preserved in various grimoires dating from the 17th century and later. According to the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, the effects credited to most of the staves were very relevant to the average Icelanders of the time, who were mostly substitence farmers and had to deal with harsh climatic conditions.

Reblogged with thanks to http://chaosophia218.tumblr.com

Jake Berthot

Oil Paintings by Jake Berthot

Jake Berthot was born in Niagara Falls, NY in 1939.  He attended the New School for Social Research and Pratt Institute in the early 1960s. The artist held teaching positions at Cooper Union, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and The School of Visual Arts. Jake Berthot died December 30, 2014 and bequeathed 12 works to the Phillips Collection, Washington DC.

Berthot began exhibiting in the mid-1960s, at a time when Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism were part of the aesthetic environment. Berthot’s early work was geometric and the color was subdued. Over the following years, his color intensified and the underlying grid opened to include an oval (some thought a portrait or a head). In 1992, Berthot moved to upstate New York where he wrote a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson on the wall of his new studio: ‘We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry – a narrow belt.”

There, Berthot began to incorporate the landscape into his paintings – the land that held him and demanded his care. Although his step away from abstraction to figuration seemed radical, the tenets that characterized his work remained the same: his torqued underlying grid, his distinctive brushwork (an admirer of Milton Resnick), and his sensitive color.

Charles Seliger

Charles Seliger, “Earthscape”, 2000, Ink and Acrylic Gel and Oil on Pressed Board

Charles Seliger was an American abstract expressionist painter. He was born in Manhattan June 3, 1926, and he died on 1 October 2009, in Westchester County, New York. Seliger was one of the original generation of Abstract expressionist painters connected with the New York School

Seliger began his career in 1945 as one of the youngest artists to exhibit at The Art of This Century Gallery, and as the youngest artist associated with the Abstract expressionist movement. The Art of This Century gallery was opened in New York City during World War II in 1942 by Peggy Guggenheim who was then married to the surrealist painter Max Ernst. In 1943, Seliger met and befriended Jimmy Ernst the son of Max Ernst, and who at the age of 23 years was just a few years older than Seliger.

Seliger was drawn into the circle of the avant-garde through his friendship with Ernst. His paintings attracted the attention of Howard Putzel who worked with Peggy Guggenheim. At 19, Seliger was included in Putzel’s groundbreaking exhibition ‘A Problem for Critics’ at the 67 Gallery. .Also in 1945 he had his first solo show at the Art of This Century Gallery. Seliger showed his paintings there until 1947 when Guggenheim closed the gallery and returned to Europe. At 20 the Museum of Modern Art acquired his painting “Natural History: Form within Rock” for their permanent collection.

Carl Warner

Carl Warner, “Sweaterland”

Carl Warner blends photography and art to make highly conceptual visual images. Based in London, Warner’s 25-year career spans still life and advertising photography. He is best known for his intricate food landscapes.

“It’s hard to know if something is really good until it still excites you as an image several months after it has been created. I usually get very excited about an image once I have shot and put it together on the computer screen. Several days, weeks, or months later, it then becomes apparent if the image is really any good or not, because not only do I feel the same way about it, but other people appear to share the same feeling.” – Carl Warner

Kilian Schonberger

Four Photographs by Kilian Schonberger

Kilian Schönberger’s work boasts captivating clarity and depth, serving to distinguish it from the masses of landscape photography. The range of color and tone found in his images is made all the more impressive by the fact that Schönberger is colorblind. Focusing on texture and pattern instead of color, Schönberger creates brightly contrasted, beautiful images.

Schönberger labels himself as both a photographer and a geographer, and describes himself as aspiring always “to cut my path as a photographer with my own creative perspective-despite being colorblind.” Schönberger adds, “I recognized that I could turn this so-called disadvantage into a strength…while getting a picture of a chaotic forest scene, I can’t clearly distinguish the different green and brown tones. Brushing aside this ‘handicap’ I don’t care about those tones and just concentrate on the patterns of wood to achieve an impressive image structure.”

Emanuele Roncov

Paintings by Emanuele Ronco (Rems 182)

Italian artist Emanuele Ronco (better known as Rems 182) of Truly Design produces graffiti works that blur the line between reality and surrealism. His latest creations include portraits that present multiple perspectives of a person’s face and hands that tend to blend into one another. There’s a softness to each image that allows the various expressions to complement each other while revealing the complexities of human emotion.

Rems 182’s murals are highly symbolic. They offer thought-provoking visuals that push the viewer to wonder which face is any given person’s real one. Is it just one of them or are they all real? The artist also includes images of skulls in his collection, symbolizing both death and rebirth.

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.

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.”

Ichiro Kojima

Ichiro Kojima, “Near Inagaki, Tsugaru”, 1960, Gelatin Silver Print

Born and raised in the northern city of Aomori, Kojima was the eldest son in a family that ran a toy and photographic supply store. He learned photography under the influence of his father, and began to publish his work in photography magazines. His subjects were everyday landscapes on the Tsugaru and Shimokita peninsulas, but his work stood apart from the mainstream realism of that era and soon gained notice for its compositional and poetic sensibilities.

With strong encouragement from the pioneer photojournalist Yonosuke Natori, Kojima mounted his first exhibition, ‘Tsugaru’, in Tokyo in 1958. Following this strong start, he moved to Tokyo in 1961 to pursue a career as a professional photographer. There he held his second exhibition, ‘Freezing’. However, having emerged on the scene with photographs of his home country, he now faced great difficulty making photographs in a new environment.

After the death of Natori, his main supporter in Tokyo, Kojima returned to Aomori. He embarked on a new project in Hokkaido, but he feel ill after repeated exposure to severe conditions and died at the early age of thirty-nine.