David Blackwood

"March Wesleyville, From Bennetts High Island" 1976

"Fire Down in Labrador"  32" x 20"  1983

"The 'Friend' Bound for Labrador"  20" x 32"  2007

"Hauling Job / Sturges house"

"Visitation on Bragg"  20" x 16"  1997

While I usually post current work by younger newer artists, I am occasionally made aware of my profound ignorance of older successful living artists. David Blackwood is a case in point. His piece "Hauling Job/Sturges House" was featured on the cover of E. Annie Proulx's famous novel "The Shipping News" back in 1993. But I just wasn't paying attention. Well now I am. His narrative prints capture the history, myths, legends and life of the seafaring people of Newfoundland. It's beautiful and haunting.

You can find out more about the artist at his website: www.davidblackwood.com
But if you want to see more work you'll have to troll through the many galleries that carry it. Among them are:
www.gallery78.com
abbozzogallery.com
www.mayberryfineart.com
emmabutler.com
www.winchestergalleriesltd.com

Thank you Mr. McDevitt for the heads up.

Damon Kowarsky

"Istanbul I"  etching and aquatint from 6 copper plates  22.5 x 47cm

"Blackbird" with Kyoko Imazu etching & aquatint from 2 copper plates  32x21cm

"Night March"  with Kyoko Imazu  etching & aquatint from 2 copper plates  32x21cm

"Spring Street"  etching & aquatint from 2 copper plates  32x34cm

"Shalami Bazaar"  charcoal on paper  109x240cm

I posted Damon Kowarsky's work way back in June 2009. He's kept busy since then. His career has taken him all over the planet. He studied in Scotland and Australia and taught art in Pakistan. He worked on an archaeological dig in Egypt, and has executed work based on travels in Japan, Korea and the United States. At the center of all his work is the city, sometimes modern, but more often the ancient cities he's visited in his travels, ancient cities that stand as living links to the archaeological artefacts he has occasionally illustrated for scientific publication. He has a knack for expressing architecture not as the perfect straight lined preplanned illusion of blueprints and conceptual renderings, but as the organic evolving things they actually are. Sometimes the city is portrayed for it's own sake, for the love of it's rooftops and windows and labyrinthine complexities. But in much of his work he invites figures, both human and animal to enter the urban realm in scenarios ranging from the ordinary to the dreamlike and surreal.
You can see more at hs website: www.damon.tk

And if you happen to be in Melbourne anytime in the next couple of weeks he currently has new work showing in Armadale at Gallery 1156.

Amy Casey

"High-rise," acrylic on panel, 48" x 36"

"Inner City," acrylic on panel, 30" x  30"

 "Lean To," acrylic on panel, 16" x 16"

 "Megalopolis," acrylic on panel, 36" x 60"

"Distant Lands," 2 color etching on paper, 8 ¼" x 10" (signed and numbered edition of 30)

It is rare for me to be able to see artwork that I post here in person. Which is unfortunate. It is often impossible to assess artwork online. Such was the case with Amy Casey's work which I first posted in July of 2009. As much as I enjoyed the imagery it was simply impossible to appreciate the delicate detail in her originals which I saw recently at Zg Gallery in Chicago. The work is still up for a while if you happen to be in the area. Amy's work has been exploring the complex web of the urban environment for quite some time. In her earliest pieces buildings still rested upon terra firma though often via rickety stilts. The stilts grew, swayed, tottered and finally collapsed leaving her buildings to fend for themselves in a white void. Now the buildings must rest upon other buildings (like the mythical turtles that were once thought to hold up the earth one imagines it's nothing but buildings all the way down) or they are bound together by wires, bridges, and brick walls. Trees, grass and rivers no longer exist upon native soil for all of that has vanished. The urban architecture itself provides the only haven for small green places. These are meditations on how cities exist, how they grow and evolve, becoming a life unto themselves until the landscape upon which they once stood is impossible to detect. It is beautiful, humorous, poignant work.
You can look through her work at the galleryy link above or at her website amycaseypainting.com

Mark Bennett

"Town of Mayberry"  24.25" x 36.25" lithograph

"Home of Fred and Wilma Flintstone" 24.25" x 36.25" lithograph

"Home of Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson"  32" x 48.25"  lithograph

"Home of Darrin and Samantha Stevens"  24.25" x 36.25" lithograph

I'm generally not a huge fan of conceptual art, but that's usually because the concepts behind them are often so dull. Now here's a concept that makes me think, damn, I wish I'd thought of that. But since I didn't, I'm glad someone else did. Mark Bennett is a loving consumer of popular culture, especially television and film. He carefully observes the environments of his favorite characters and maps out their lives in the form of traditionally rendered blueprints. Like others who grew up poring over Tolkien's maps of Middle Earth I developed a love of maps that correspond to realms of fiction and fantasy. I only wish he had a website of his own where I could browse through his complete body of work. My whole life I've wanted someone to see a map of Gilligan's Island. If he's done it already I've yet to find it.

Here's a couple galleries where you can look through more of his work:

www.connercontemporary.com

www.markmooregallery.com

Jenny Robinson

Title unknown

"Billboard"  monotype  53" x 35"

"Dipper"  monoprint  30" x 30"

"Harrison Street Billboard"  monoprint  47" x 30"

"Water Tower Red"  monotype  53" x 35"

Jenny Robinson depicts the monumental derelicts that litter the modern landscape; decaying billboards, old water towers, an abandoned roller coaster... Our penchant for building on a grand scale is hardly limited to banks and stadiums. The mundane infrastructure of our daily lives is frequently enormous, and strangely invisible due to its ubiquity. And when these structures begin to decay they somehow manage to recede from our attention as if they were growing slowly invisible. Many artists have been drawn such ghostlike relics of modernity, but Ms. Robinson captures something of their ethereal presence in her gorgeous monotypes. She relies heavily on initial impressions recorded in sketchbooks but the final work is stylized, and carefully formatted to fill out the frame in dramatic fashion. Her use of large scale prints  is itself "monumental", a way of documenting, memorializing and extolling a fading art form in a digital age.
go to her website (www.jennyrobinson.com) to see more!

Thanks to the artist Sarah M. Newton for the recommendation

Sarah M. Newton

 "Gino's Liquors" multiple plate aquatint  8" x 6.25"



































"16th & Bryant"   aquatint  7" x 9"





























"23rd & Potrero"  aquatint  7" x 6"

"K & B Liquors"  aquatint  5.5" x 7"

"Super Lavar"  reduction woodcut"  7.25" x 10"

Sarah Newton's prints are an exercise in the processing of observation. Almost all of her images are from locations a mile or less from where she lives; seemingly ordinary street corners, and rundown businesses. By limiting her focus to the mundane within her immediate vicinity she explores just how much there is to see and how little we see it. She takes reference photos as well as doing sketches of locations for her initial studies, then returns to the studio to make her prints. In her own words, "Hand drawn on woodblock or metal plate, the prints are created slowly, through cutting, scraping, burnishing and proofing the plates or blocks. The attention that goes into the development of the image constitutes a meditation on details and spaces that normally don't receive more than a passing notice". But it is not merely the place upon which her meditative process is built. There is also the light, the time of day. With exquisite subtlety she captures the nuances of night lit scenes and the shimmering quality of early morning. The prints are small, a size that requires only a single viewer at a time. Small art can, in this way, create a sense of intimacy with the viewer and the very nature of her work is perfectly suited to this.
Go to her website: www.sarahmnewton.com to see more.

(as you may have noticed I am now putting my short little essays at the bottom of the post so the work comes first. Visual art should speak for itself first and foremost).

Daniel Danger

The best illustrators pursue a personal vision no less than fine artists, and can be counted as such. Daniel Danger (If it is his real name, I think every 12 year old boy should be very jealous) builds layers of line work in mostly monochromatic silkscreens to create a night world of astonishing depth and texture. Fortunately he has posted fairly decent sized digital files, so it is just possible to get a sense of the subtlety that the originals might possess.
His is a world of enormous spaces in which small fragile characters are almost completely engulfed by the darkness that surrounds them. It is a world of somber but significant drama. It is a haunted world full of ghosts and memories and the almost overwhelming sense that it is later than you think.
You can see more of his art prints, gig posters and album covers at his website: tinymediaempire.com
Definitely click on the images below to view them larger!

















“and i dont even like to be seen in the parking lot between the movies and the drink and the glass, whatever the hell that means”
18×24″ five color silkscreen 2009






















“I'd sink to your city streets if i wasnt buried in your hands”
16×24″ five color silkscreen 2009













“has thou slain the jabberwock?”
12×24″ five color screenprint 2009






















“lock and key or latchkey, a house you tricked empty”
20×30″ five color silkscreen 2009























“I came to know an archer”
24×24 three color screenprint with hand painted elements