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.

Search for an Artist on this blog (or cut and paste from the list at the bottom of this page)

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Mark Shetabi

Afterimage (Brontosaurus)
2010
oil on linen
60" x 84"

Fog Machine
2008
oil on linen
18" x 24"

Tanker (Night)
2012
oil on linen
60" x 84"

Tanker (adrift)
2010
oil on linen
60" x 84"

Tanker In Dry Dock
2010
oil on canvas
60" x 76"
 Mark Shetabi is a painter and sculptor who teaches art at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. His large, nearly monochromatic paintings cover a wide range of subject matter with a particular focus on architecture, engineering and industrial design. There is a low contrast soft focus treatment that lends the images a nostalgic quality reminiscent of old photographs. But keep in mind that many of these paintings are 7 feet wide echoing the monumentality of their themes and subjects. Some more recent paintings reverse this scale depicting such humble things as pipe fittings on canvases only inches across. But it's these epic pieces that initially grabbed and continue to hold my attention. There is a feeling of dreamlike unreality to them, as if such things are barely conceivable, much less possible. That they exist in the real world seems almost absurd.

 You can see more of his work at Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York City.

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