When I started trying to promote my own artwork online I kept coming across other people's art that amazed or compelled me in one way or another. This blog has been a way for me to practice thinking and writing about art, as well as learning more about my peers and all the incredible art that is being made out there.
INDEX OF ARTISTS
links to earlier posts, and links to various art blogs and blogs by artists and can be found at the bottom of this page.

Monday, January 30, 2012

David deVillier

"The Giant"  oil on wood panel  48" x 47.5"

"The White Meditation"  oil on steel panel  24" x 30"

"The Woman Who Dreams of Other Lives"  oil on panel with steel frame  55" x 55"

"Blue Fox/Blue Woods"  oil on wood panel  48" x 48"

"The Hiding Place"  oil on canvas  30" x 30"

David Devillier is a painter and sculptor originally from Louisiana, currently residing in Idaho. He's an obvious fan of materials, painting on a variety of surfaces from wood panels and canvas to steel in addition to working in 3-d. For his painting he combines hard edged lines and graphic structural forms with a loose energetic application of paint, allowing accident to mingle with design. It's a nice effect. But at it's heart the work is narrative. He employs a variety of thematic set-pieces and characters designed to provoke a tale rather than simply tell one. Recently two of the central elements in his works are trees of all sorts, usually solitary, sometimes in small groups, ...and snowmen. While there is no way for me to know what snowmen signify for the artist personally, I find them a touching and oddly comic commentary on our own ephemeral and fragile existence. Or maybe I just obsessed over the Frosty the Snowman melting in the greenhouse too much as a kid. Anyway, the work is there for you to look at for yourself and make of it what you will. He has a website (daviddevillier.com), but it appears to be a work in progress without much to actually look at yet so I recommend starting with Gail Severn Gallery.

Then you can check out work from various periods at these galleries pages:
www.artforte.com/Artists/deVillier/default.htm
www.codagallery.com/palm_desert/art/index.php?artist=298
www.jhmusegallery.com/html/artistresults.asp?artist=83
augengallery.com/Artists/devillier.html


Thursday, January 26, 2012

Robert Ernst Marx

"Be Careful"  oil on linen  34" x 46"  2011

"Dear Prudence"  oil on linen  12" x 10"  2010


"Justice"  oil on linen  12" x 9"  2011

"Legion of Loose Ladies"  oil on linen  28" x 26"  2011

"Tired Helen"  oil on linen  9" x 8"  2010

Robert Ernst Marx is a very well established artist who earned his BFA and MFA in Illinois back in the early 1950s. So he's not the usual young up and coming artist looking for a bit of exposure that I usually try to post. But this is all current work from an artist who is still actively striving to perfect his visual language. He creates fascinating and haunting portraits and figures that employ a highly developed collection of marks, techniques and symbolic props. These people, whether real or imagined, reflect the artist's fairly dark vision of humanity and his own admitted obsessions concerning "...the arrogance of power, the exclusivity of the institutions of church and state, abuse by and of both spouse and child, and our own and others' personal fears and insecurities." But for all the dark brooding pessimism of our all too human nature, there is a haunting beauty to the work that attracts the viewer rather than repels. There is also an ambiguity that invites the viewer to interpret and meditate on the nature of both man and art.
Check out his website: roberternstmarx.com
And you can see much more work at the following galleries:
http://www.davidsongalleries.com/artists/marx/marx-dc.php
http://masonmurer.info/robert-marx