Steve McDonald

"Turbine #2" from the series "out of the void"
70" x 70" Archival print on Linen with hand-applied Acrylic color

"Out of the Void #5" 36" x36"  ink and water-based paints on linen

"Hillside Retreat"

"India" 60" x 45" Chalk, watercolors and pencil on paper

"The Ice-Cream Man "   24" x 24" Digital drawing with hand-applied color on paper.

Steve McDonald is an artist based in Bali that shows his art in Toronto and London. His intricate line drawings of aerial landscapes, cityscapes and cryptic machinery are executed on various scales and in multiple media, from pens, markers and paints to digital, and various combinations thereof. He also creates
numerous abstract kaleidoscopic prints in a similar vein, as well as digital paint portraiture. But it's these elaborate line drawn scenes that enthrall me the most. The mechanistic formality of the subject matter is countered with loose flowing line work that lends both machine and city a breathing organic quality. This is as it should be. Such creations may be initially designed with mathematical precision in their details but the final products are, in the act of actually building them, and even more so in using them, warped, frayed, bent, broken and patched. In the end they more closely resemble the constructs of ants or corals and other more primitive lifeforms than they do the perfectly mechanistic blueprinted plans that human beings initially envisioned. Mr. McDonald's work is wide ranging and his ideas and themes are not limited to what I've shown here.

You can see a good deal more at his website: www.steviemcd.com
But I would highly recommend browsing through his Facebook page (www.facebook.com/artbysteve) for even More material.

"View from the Tower" in progress
Pencil, charcoal and acrylic on board  72" x 72" . 

Hubert Blanz

Geospaces - M 1:115000 C-Print, matt foil on aluminum  180x180cm  2002

Geospaces - detail

Roadshow no. 1  C-print, Diasec on aluminum  80x120cm  2007

"X-Plantation 11"  C-Print  Diasec on Dibond  100x150cm  2008

"Fifth Face no. 1"  C-print, diasec on dibond  117x135cm  2010

I had a hard time picking out just a few images to represent Hubert Blanz's work. And in addition to the photographic work there's film, installations and sculpture. But my favorites are these collages of freeways and airports and cities, and his satellite-like views of landscapes composed entirely of microchips, motherboards and other computer circuitry. One just sort of gets this work viscerally and immediately. It doesn't require much in the way of analysis. The environments most of us live in are so far removed from the natural world that these images trigger a instantaneous spark of recognition. The artificial pushes aside the natural sometimes so completely, whether in the real life of our actual cities or in the second life of online digital environments, that scale begins to seem meaningless, and what's real vs. unreal is called into question. Each of these images is from a series with many more examples to look through on his website: www.blanz.net

Joana Garrido

untitled, digital,  2012

untitled,  digital,  2012

from a series "Buildings Have Feelings Too",  digital,  2011

"#4 Optiker"  digital,  2010

Sometimes digital art can be dismissed by people like me who still get their hands (and clothes and everything else) dirty with actual paints and brushes. But that's simply unfair. Every medium is it's own thing and new ones have as much to offer as the old. What is sometimes frustrating is how often digital artists try to mimic other media. Joana Garrido never makes that mistake. She loves the very noature of digital manipulation and although the pieces I've selected may not show it (I just grabbed what I ;liked the most) she tries a little bit of everything, pushing boundaries and finding out what kind of effects she can get, what works and what doesn't. In other words, she's an artist. And when her stuff works, as it usually does, it can be fairly breathtaking. These are not just backdrops for fantasy flicks and sci-fiction video games. They're images that stand alone, drawing the viewer into a singular visual experience. Enjoy.
You can go to her website at joanagarrido.com but it will just tell you to go to www.flickr.com/photos/onomatoh/

Hsiao-Ron Cheng

"Weeping" digital painting 2012

"February Afternoon" digital painting 2012

"The Child and the Fox"  digital painting 2013

"November"

"Stuck" drawing

Hsiao-Ron Cheng is a Taiwanese artist exploring the world of pop-surrealism. She works primarily digitally, so for once I don't have to fret too much about not being able to see the work in person. This is it, if not at the highest resolution possible. Her themes are focused squarely on childhood and nature, how the two naturally intersect and how they are all too often separated. I think there is longing in all children for a deep connection to the natural world. For those that grow up in dense urban environments, that longing can turn into a bittersweet heartbreak of fantasy and despair. The lost presence of nature "out there" is internalized and comes to represent the sense of isolation and and separateness that most children experience as they near maturity. It is a poignant emotion both universal and intensely personal. Each experience of this sort is likely to make a person ask, "Am I the only one?" The answer of course is no, but sometimes it is only art that really can communicate this truth with any meaning to those who feel on the verge of despair. I suspect that her art has touched more than a few young people out there.
You can see more at her website: hsiaoroncheng.com or on her Flickr page.
thanks to booooooom.com for posting her work before me.

Enda O'Donoghue

"Reno" (2011) Oil on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

"even prettier once it got dark" (2012) Oil on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

"Even prettier once it got dark" detail

"Ellipsis" (2012) Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

"artificial light" (2012) Oil on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

O'Donoghue is an Irish artist currently in Germany whose work is a fascinating exercise in reverse engineering. All painting is about seeing, but what happens when seeing is filtered through  pixels and compression formats, erasing details that we barely notice are gone? His work looks in at the missing detail and reinvents it in an extraordinary series of process paintings. You need to do 2 things real quick (if you haven't already): 1. Go back up to look carefully at the detail image of "Even prettier once it got dark" and see where it fits in to the whole of the original. 2. Note the size of these paintings! The paintings are composed of discreet pieces, like pixels, but each pixel is treated like it's own abstract image with the loving attentions of brush and color. We have seen things along these lines before of course. Pixelated images composed of hundreds of other images became almost a cliche in the previous decade, and Chuck Close has been working with similar ideas for much longer. But O'Donoghue brings a unique approach. Tremendous attention and subtlety is brought to bear on the discrete pieces so that they can no longer be seen as mere pixels. He introduces invented and beautiful detail where it was lost. At the same time the overall image is disintegrating, losing it's cohesion as if through signal noise or the slow processing of a moving image. His choices of recent subject matter (culled from the infinite gathering space of the internet) seem to parody this structural contrast. Amusement parks, casinos and the mass experience in general reflect both the rich intensity of human experience and the disintegration of the self into a sometimes meaningless kaleidescope of external stimuli. This work is, in short, a powerful visual commentary on the rewiring of our connections to reality.

Trying to share them like this, as small digital reproductions, is almost a bad joke. I myself have never seen the originals but I can extrapolate in my mind what is going on here and imagine the effect, if imperfectly. I'm hoping you can too. And maybe one of us will get a chance to see the real thing someday.

You can see more work and many more detail images as well on his website: www.endaodonoghue.com
His work is currently on display through the 18th of January in his hometown of Limerick, Ireland at gallery.limerick.ie

And sorry for the delay. I'll have more work up next week.

Marc Da Cunha Lopes

Marc Da Cunha Lopes is a commercial photographer/photoshop artist who has a curious little website. On it he displays some of his commercial work (which is very slick but, let's face it, very commercial) as well as some of what certainly appears to be his own personal work. If it isn't, then bravo to the client. The reason I am uncertain about this is that the website has nothing else on it BUT these images. No information on how to contact the artist. No statement or CV. Just some very strange compelling photography. There are several different series, including more images from the two themes represented here. There are is also flesh eating zombies, robot gigolos, a little girl and her giant rat friend, and more! If that doesn't at least get you to look then you may be a little too high brow for this blog.
www.marcdacunhalopes.com
















































































Thanks to Tunacan Jones at FHN for the heads up.