Mr.Caldwell
Jacob Lawrence -The Migration Series
Composed of sixty paintings, the Migration Series put, what I like to call Black Art, on the map. This series of paintings showed the migration of African Americans from the south to the north between the two World Wars. Though these paintings didn't show much facial expression or emotion, we can still get the feel of poverty and an unhappy lower class race. I think that leaving these facial expressions out makes us really look deeper into the painting, and it is a great way to draw the observers attention. The migration series is done with water color, laying one coat of color down at a time which gave Lawrence a consistency of colors. These paintings were put in a New York gallery in 1941, making Jacob Lawrence the first black artist to have work placed in a New York gallery. Until this series, the migration of the southern African American culture was not publicized or brought to the attention of the middle and social class people. No one really knew the struggle and the hard times they had experienced except themselves, but Jacob made it known by placing it in one of the biggest art-intelligent cities, New York.

Holly Farrell

Holly Farrell

Post by Erin Hall: 

I was first exposed to Farrell's work at a group show at Tanner Hill Gallery. I was extremely impressed to learn she was a self-taught painter. She works in the realm of still life and there is a universal quality to her paintings that comes from the subject matter of her paintings. She typically paints different household items that can be familiar to everyone and I think that makes her work relatable. Her work itself, although simple, evokes some emotion for me and has this wonderful nostalgia to it. Her style is not incredibly formal and is folky (probably not a word) and quaint in a way. For more information about her work, here is an interview done with the artist:

http://neotericart.com/2008/06/23/interview-with-holly-farrell/

Jaroslaw Kukowski

"Praying mantis" oil on board, 122x100cm

Jaroslaw Kukowski is a Polish contemprary artist that primary works in oil painting and some sculpture. Kukowski's work is quite difficult to describe since his paintings tend to be very surreal. Joanna Kalinowska describes his work by stating: "Kukowski explores moral and social themes relating to death and elapsing time in his works. They are also a detailed study of human nature and their objective is to move the spectator deeply."

 However, the thing that I am most attracted to in his work is the beautiful skill and technique involved in creating such grotesque creatures. Most of his work includes the use of lovely, more striking colors as well as realistically depicted elements, such as statues, backgrounds or portions of the human figure, yet he pairs them with strange, squishy looking beings, or further alterations of the basic human form. I find something very visually striking about both his different painting styles and his concious decisions on depicting his subjects. His process is also quite interesting, as he documents his progress through animations which seems to directly relate to his paintings themselves as they seem to relate quite intimately with a sense of time.

 "Angel with Broken Wing" oil on board, 80x120cm

"Fresco no. 39" oil on board, 80x100cm

oil on board, 80x100cm

- Samantha Johnson

Holy Virgin Mary, Chris Ofili, 1996

What draws me to Chris's work is his use of religious and African stereotypes. He is most known for the incorporation of elephant dung in many of his early works. In this particular piece he depicts the Virgin Mary as an african woman, but the way an african woman would look when broken down by stereotype. She has big lips, a large nose, and wide hips. Her breasts are formed from the before mentioned elephant dung. The butterflies that are depicted around her are composed of pornographic imagery. Chris's Virgin Mary, to me, symbolizes what mainstream African American culture has become. We depict our women as sexualized objects, interested only in the hips, lips, and breasts. We sing about it. We rap about it. We have our minds set on obtaining money, cars, and women. We are never satisfied with one so we rinse and repeat. We buy what we are told is hip and we lust for what we are told is sexy. I find Ofili's use of the elephant dung in this piece as the most thought provoking part. It symbolizes what the human body is when it has been sexified. It no longer becomes a temple. It is no longer holy.

Shaun Washington

Ruth Weisberg

Ruth Weisberg is primarily an oil painter but works with some mixed media, but I was mostly drawn to her paintings because of the inspiration behind them. She tends to use her own Jewish heritage and history in general as the inspiration for many of her works. She also likes to focus on memories from her own past or her family's history. I found this very relatable because I too tend to draw inspiration from past events and my family. Not only does she focus on history but she speaks of creating paintings based on "the secret history of women" so most of her subject matter is the female figure. I was drawn to the work below because of all the movement she has created to make the water and reflections around the figure look extremely realistic. She uses light in a very beautiful way that also draws attention to the contours and details of the female subject. Not only is the work very visually interesting because of the water but it also gives me the feel that she was actually seeing this figure from under water, whether she was or not. She has created such an enclosed space around the figure for the eye to move through that it makes me feel like I am actually in the same environment as the subject.

 

Shelby Turner- FA13 Vogel

 

All my life I have been searching for a way to make my most treasured items last. Often times old trinkets become broken, lost, or forgotten altogether over the years of childhood. Unfortunately, for some of us this issue continues into adulthood. Marina Muun manages to save some of her treasures whether real, intangible, or unimaginable in Collecting. 

Muun, an illustration artist, is not technically a painter yet her quiet collection depicted in Collecting speaks to the painter in me. The flat fields of opaque color remind me of our current focus in class, the Renner color studies. I have always been scared of color. Simple compositions make it feel less threatening. Even here combined in a more complex way I find peace in the distinctly separated fields.

http://www.marinamuun.com/

Meri Wright. Vogel FA2013

Maya Kulenovic

MAYA KULENOVIC

Maya Kulenovic is an active, contemporary painter. Her work consists mostly of close up portraits with a sprinkling of landscapes and cityscapes. Her portraits tend to depict pale figures sort of emerging from a dark background, and if you look at her oldest work and compare it to her most current, you will see that over time her figures have become more misty and atmospheric, more obscured.

DUCHESS, 2007, 30"x30"

NEBULA, 2011, 27"x23"

She works in oil paints, using many layered glazes, and she doesn't typically begin work with the final image in mind, rather, she prefers to let the image build itself. This process helps create the wonderful visual textures in her work, especially in her more recent images, adding to the ephemeral vision of her figures.

MIRAGE, 2011, 30" x 30"

"I don't even know what it looks like until I recognize it in a mark on canvas. I wish for my paintings to end up more powerful than I can visualize them. I can achieve this only by allowing something else other than myself into it - an element of randomness - and when something surprising and wonderful happens, I can recognize and distill it, build upon it." –Maya Kulenovic

As an artist, Maya hopes to portray borderline states between being and non being, creation and destruction, life and death, trance and wakefulness, sanity and madness, and more. Her figures are always alone in their dark portraits, posed with nothing else but perhaps their shirt collars or a faint light. All of her works  seem to encourage of feeling of desperation, loneliness, darkness, and uncertainty.

AGRARIAN, 2010, 24" x 18"

She has also painted some desolate landscapes and barren cities. Like her figures, her cities are lonely and pale, devoid of people, projecting a sense of loneliness even more profound than her close up portraits. They typically feature many buildings with even more darkened, empty windows and completely lacking any sort of life, human or otherwise.

BLIND SQUARE, 2006, 24"X52"

Her landscapes are just as empty, but seem even more hauntingly beautiful. They tend to have a more even range of value, whereas her portraits have more darks and her cityscapes have more lights. Pale, broken trees and dry grass are her preferred subject matter, which form these serene landscapes of eerie stillness. When I look at them, I do not feel so much like I am looking at a painting lacking movement, rather I feel like I am looking at a moving, living, breathing place, which has been disturbed and broken - scarred, as marked by the broken trees and parted grass - and that place is now frozen, perhaps by pain or fear, by whatever occurred before our viewing; or like between what has transpired and what is yet to come, it has caught us glimpsing at it, and it intends to hold its breath until we look away.

GATHERING, 2010, 23" x 33"

Amanda Qualls

Helen Frankenthaler Images

Helen Frankenthaler Image Links

Trojan Gates

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A1974%7CA%3AAR%3AE%3A1&page_number=2&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Jacob's Ladder

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A1974%7CA%3AAR%3AE%3A1&page_number=3&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Elan Sok, Blog Post 1

Helen Frankenthaler

I first became familiar with Frankenthaler's paintings through an art history class. When the image was first put up on the projection I immediately thought it to be watercolor. I was amazed to learn her work was done in oil paint and was even more intrigued by her process. Frankenthaler thins out the oil paint to mimic the properties of watercolor and worked to soak and stain the canvas with her pigment. The after effects create a wash of natural, organic forms which the artist preferred. Frankenthaler was inspired by the styles of artist like Pollock to leave her medium accumulated on top of her working canvas. I appreciate the transparency of the colors and the movement and direction created within her work. The transparency allows one to see the layers and creates an effect not typically seen with oil paint. 

Elan Sok

Martin Machado - Corinne Atamaniuk

So I came across a new artist by the name of Martin Machado and immediately was drawn to his surreal, beautiful seascape paintings. His work is an original take on something pretty ancient, seascapes. Yet I find them pretty refreshing and get the feeling I'm actually with him on the sea, while looking at his work. The colors are spot on, from that kind of early, sleepy sun coming up over the horizon, to a stormy, dark night sky. And the fact he just splashes the water color across the page and then fills in his detail is something I really appreciated. It's kind of messy and makes me think of some paper you might find on the floor of some boat, all wet and forgotten. 

By Corinne Atamaniuk. Vogel.