Stef Cook

Sam, 2012  watercolor  5.25" x 8.5"

Ben, 2012  watercolor  5.25" x 8.5"

Yezen, 2012  watercolor  5.25" x 8.5"

CJ, 2012  Watercolor  3"x4"

Kent, 2012  Watercolor  3"x4"

Stef Cook is a portraitist. A good one.  Her profile watercolors go beyond mere recording and begin to say really emotive things about both the models and the artist. After looking through all of the portraits posted on her website, and getting a feel for each one I quickly began to feel as if I was intimately familiar with this group of friends and acquaintances. I began to have opinions about each one. This one I rather liked because he's sort of laid back, kind of a nerd and unpretentious. That one however is kind of an annoying sack when you really get down to it. Not that he's a jerk really, but he just gets on my nerves. OK I confess he seems perfectly nice but I just don't like him. This other guy is pretty cool but not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. So and so, on the other hand, is too smart for his own good and frankly I get a little tired of his left wing conspiracy theories. These people get into your head the way characters in a really well done TV show can. They make you feel like you're in on their lives and that is a remarkable achievement. The more abstracted portraits are fascinating too because the artist is still able to communicate so much with so little. I mean, come on, Kent is... well jeez, he's just such a Kent!
Go hang out with more of these guys at www.stefcook.com
And maybe one of these days Stef will introduce us to some of the gals in her gang. Oddly I had at first assumed Stef was a Stefan because all the portraits are of dudes. But she's a Stefanie. Go figure. You just can't judge gender from art. I like that.

Thanks to the folks over at www.vivianite.net for posting her work

Gong Yuan

"Condition"  oil   37.4" x 43.3"

These portraits by the artist Gong Yuan make me think of Francis bacon with a better sense of humor. But where Francis Bacon plumbed the depths of pure dark emotionality, using the figure merely as a prop these are true portraits. Okay, maybe some of them or more caricature. But even so, they take caricature up to the level of high art. All of the disturbing and agonizingly recognizable qualities of real people are there lurking behind the chaos of gestural paint, but there is a tender, comic element as well. A lot of fine art tends to take things just a bit too seriously. And audiences buy into this. If it isn't horrible, dark, despairing, or at least shocking, then it must not be very important. Of course there's a whole school of artists out there, many of whom I've featured, who turn all that seriousness on it's head and trumpet the value of humor in art.  But very rarely do you see both points of view so delicately balanced, so perfectly reflective of what it is to be a human being.
There's more work here:
www.saatchionline.com/gongshunblues
And the artist has a website here:
photo.163.com/gongshunblues
but be forewarned, it's in Chinese and you may find it difficult to navigate.

(most of the work on the Saatchi site is untitled. No sizes given.)

Kris Lewis

Most of Kris Lewis' work is taken up with young beautiful women, they're hair perfectly coifed, their dress, if any, elegant and slightly outlandish. There is certainly a bit of the "Playboy" aesthetic to them. There is no doubt that he has an eye for striking design, and an interest in the alluring, even the downright erotic, but his art lies in going beyond mere form and capturing an extraordinary depth of personality. He also presents his portraits in a landscape tableaux that creates a kind of narrative to engage the viewer. He cites influences ranging from Holbein to Wyeth in obvious adoration of the masters of realism, but he often incorporates a very contemporary stylization of form that is usually fairly restrained (as in the pieces below) although occasionally, more pronounced. His few paintings that are not of young women reveal that his fascinations and insights into character are hardly restricted to one sex.
To see more visit his website at www.krislewisart.com






















"Low Tide" oil on board 36"x24"






















"We're Going South" oil on linen 30"x30"























"Deconstruction Period" oil on canvas 24"x24"























"Red" oil on wood 24"x20"
























"Funeral" 30"x24"























"Cory" oil on canvas 30"x24"

Carl Randall

I was first struck by this night scene for reasons anyone who has looked at my own work will understand. (I particularly like the use of red to capture that peculiarly urban light). While there are more paintings that are quite good, I was overwhelmed when I looked at his relatively more recent portrait drawings in Japan, including survivors of the bomb in Hiroshima.
There are more paintings and plenty of drawings to look through at his website (but nothing to indicate what he's done in the past couple of years): carlrandall.com


















"House at Night" 65x45" 1999






















"Portrait of Hibakusha - Mr. Kakuta" (survivor of the atomic bomb, Hiroshima) 35x45cm 2005






















"Portrait of Hibakusha - Ms. Hideko Takahata" (survivor of the atomic bomb, Hiroshima) 35x45cm 2005























"Portrait of Donald Richie" 60x45cm 2005

David Garciasaa

Here's another portaitist, at least for the time being. These are just three of an apparent series of several dozen at least. See the rest, and other older work on his flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/garciasaa/
I really love the brushwork here.






















"Valentín" 46x46cm 2008






















"Christopher" 46x46cm 2007






















"Javi II" 100x100cm