Gideon Bok

A lot of artists work in a studio and a lot of other artists work on location. Gideon Bok does both at the same time. The setting for a lot his work is, that's right, where he works (and it's a very impressive studio if I might add). It's a big enough space for he and his friends to engage in his other interest, music, and that comes into the paintings quite a bit too. What's particularly fascinating about his work is how it records time. The structural environment of the scene is solidly established but the figures ebb and flow over the course of creating the paintings as the people in the studio also come and go. He paints in thin gestural washes that pile up like a crowd of ghosts giving us a time lapse view of not just the activity that takes place in front of the artist but also of the artist's process as well.
His work can be viewed at his gallery's website (alphagallery.com)and on his blog (gideonbok.blogspot.com)
There's also an informative interview at paintingperceptions.com



















"King of Nails" 70" x 79" oil on linen 2006-2010










"Day Triptych" 35" x 96" oil on linen 2010









"Night Triptych" 35" x 96" oil on linen 2010
















"Velvetandynewpornstones" 2008






















"Stephanie Pierce Playing Ma's Mango" 20" x18" oil on linen 2010

Seth Clark

Seth Clark is an artist, a designer, a manic doodler, collector and collagist of images. So as one might expect there is a lot to look through on his website: sethsclark.com. But all I want to show you here are his portraits of derelict buildings. There have been quite a few artists lately working with similar subject matter and I don't want to belabor the whole housing crisis issue. At any rate ruins have always been aesthetically interesting. By which I mean abandoned buildings are kind of cool. And there's a certain meditation on one's own insecurity and mortality implicit in their depiction. But aside from all THAT, these are great drawings from a guy who's not afraid to make a lot of different kinds of marks to get the feeling he's after. There are some wonderful detail images on the website that I encourage you to look though.

















"Roof Top" 26'' x 40''
pastel, charcoal, graphite on paper























"Fort" 22'' x 30''
collage, oil, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, graphite on paper























"Abandoned IV" 30'' x 21''
collage, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, graphite on paper
















"Abandoned VII" 42'' x 60''
collage, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, graphite on paper























"Abandoned V" 30'' x 21''
collage, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, graphite on paper


I cannot recall now where I first saw his work but it was on one of these two sites which both recently featured some of these same drawings:
www.booooooom.com
www.freaksonline.co.uk

Inka Essenhigh

Ms. Essenhigh's peculiar drawing style has evolved into a singularly visionary approach. Her painting is tight and illustrative allowing the drawing to play the lead role along with her carefully controlled color compositions. The overall effect is one of mystical surrealism. The mystical take is not the typical shallow new age positivism, but rather a bracing mixture of psychological mythology both dark and light.
You can see more at her website: www.inka-essenhigh.com It's interesting to look through her older work as well and see how her vision has evolved over time, especially coming to a new level of maturity in the last few years.






















"Lower East Side" 2009 oil on canvas 70 x 74 inches



















"Fog, Moss, Lichen" 2008 oil on canvas 64 x 72 inches























"Minor Sea Gods of Maine" 2009 oil on canvas 74 x 68 inches




















"The Grass at Night in July" 2006 oil on canvas 42 x 46 inches



















"Molly Waiting In Field" 2009 oil on canvas 72 x 64 inches

Thanks to booooooom.com for the intro

Night Scenes

One year of posting passed me by last November without me even noticing. I made a short comment about my 100th post and nothing whatsoever about 200. So in celebration of nothing in particular, I've decided to post this slightly different format. It is sort of a curated show if you will, the theme being, obviously, "Night". For a few years now my own work has been almost exclusively night scenes, and so I am always fascinated to see how others approach the subject. These pieces have all been posted on this blog before. Here they are again with occasional comments and links to the individual artists' websites.
(also, I will be in Santa Fe trying to find a gallery so there will be no new post until I get back, next Wednesday)

Many of these can be viewed quite a bit larger. Just click on the image.


Possibly my favorite night painting of all time, an absolutely fascinating visual narrative mystery and a unique capture of the contrast between warm man-made light and a brightly moonlit snowy landscape.
Amy Bennett "Surviving Winter" 9" x14"

I would love t see what this piece looks like in real life. Leaving more than 3/4 of the painting in absolute darkness is a bold and visually arresting move, and really evokes the feeling of night blindness driving on the snow.
Owen McAuley "Madison NY" 12" x 16" 2004

Of course the night is readily used to create a haunting atmosphere and that is definitely the case here in this portrait of a decrepit and empty insane assylum.
Maya Kulenovic "Sanitarium" 48x36"

Combining the narrative visual structure of graphic novels with a diagrammatic interpretation of a house the artist tells the tale of it's occupants' nocturnal lives.
Mark Andres "Ice Palace"

The lights of man and the the unfathomable depths of the night blue sky are employed to prove that painting the dark need not be colorless and somber.
Linden Frederick "No Exit" 2005, 45" x 45"

Nobody does nocturnal cityscapes like this guy, whose career, if I'm not mistaken, is on a well deserved and rapid upward trajectory.
Kim Cogan "Night Owl" 38"x50" 2009

Night scenes are also immensely rich soil for the seeds of myth and fable.
Kathleen Lolley "The Creation of Fireflies" acrylic on wood 2007

Jesus as a nightlight. And lovingly rendered in egg tempera. What's not to like?
Dennis Harper "Jesus Nightlight" 1995 11" x 9"

This simple composition captures perfectly the feeling of a fairly plain roadside hotel and piling on all kinds of emotional inferences for anyone who has ever traveled alone.
Dan Witz "Sherburne Hotel Lamp"

Ever since I stumbled across this sketch it has had a special place in my heart right next to another one of his, of a woman flying through the front windshield of her car. Clifford Elgin "Cop Finding body in Road"

Another narrative fable, the title works like a story unto itself.
Amanda Blake "When The Sea Turned Purple They Knew They had Gone Too Far" 14x14" oil on panel

Another night time tale, this one features zombies. It's the distant panoramic viewpoint that makes the fate of the rooftop archer so compelling.
Daniel Danger “I came to know an archer”
24×24 three color screenprint with hand painted elements

Night time is also of prime time for the dubious goings on of young men, captured here with deft photo-realism.
Alex Roulette "The Deal" 19x18" oil 2007

Technically this may be more of a twilight scene but night is imminent and the nightmare is already present, and it may well be one of the coolest paintings I have ever seen.
John Brosio "Fatigue" 48" x 60" 2009

Amy Talluto

Amy Talluto's paintings are sometimes just a little odd. Sometimes you might not even notice it. Quite a few of her paintings might strike a casual observer as fairly ordinary, though lovingly rendered landscapes. But more than a few jar one's perceptions at first glance. There are elements of discordant color here and there, occasionally everywhere. Sometimes most or almost all of a painting seems to conform to objective reality, but then there's that bright orange that one doesn't expect to see in a waterfall or glowing from the knot of a pine. At other times, unexpected reds and blues dance across a whole forestscape. It is a subtle reminder that painting is always about about abstraction on some level. Reality is translated into shapes and colors. By distorting only certain elements, the result can be either jarring or refreshing, or in this case both, reminding us to reevaluate the difference between what we see and what we're shown. But her realism remains at the center of her work around which these ideas of abstraction dance, and her talent in that regard is enough to make even her pencil drawings worth a good long look.
See more at www.amytalluto.com

















"Heart" 50" x 64" oil on canvas 2007
















"Wraiths" 44" x 60" oil on canvas 2006






















"White Pine" 40" x 26" oil on canvas 2009


















"Burn - Blue Mountain" 26" x 34" oil on canvas 2008

















"Burn 3" 10" x13" pencil on paper 2007

Andrew Hem

I'm not sure why I didn't post his work early on. I saw it but apparently forgot to save an image or jot down the website. well, anyway, Andrew Hem is an immensely talented artist somewhere in the neo-pop-surrealist-graffiti-illustrator genre. Ah, labels. Anyway, all you really have to do is look. He has a distinctive drawing vocabulary and a confident graphic painting approach, which he employs for very effective psychological portraiture. He's done a lot of work recently based on his travels and examining the crisis of being culturally adrift. You can see more work on his website: www.andrewhem.com
And even more plus some fine illustration work at magnetreps.com
And you can keep track of his latest news on his blog: idrewhim.blogspot.com











"City Street"






















"Slow"






















title unknown
















"Relax"

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.

Kevin Bell

Kevin Bell takes a sly look at the modern American landscape. In one series of paintings entitled "Land-Object" he separates out fragments of land that are already broken up by man-made structures or boundaries. He points out that this is how we experience landscape; little plots and parts and parcels all jumbled up with, and broken apart by the made made structures that are so integrated into everything we see. His other paintings consider this fact as well, carefully depicting the more mundane and ubiquitous aspects of our contemporary environment. The hills and trees, the flat open plains and distant mountains exist only as backdrop to our car windshield, the rest stop toilet, or our sliding glass door. All of this is painted with a subdued palette that reminds me of haze and heat and a certain lethargy that seems, somehow, very appropriate to the disromantic point of view.
see more at his website: kevinjackbell.com














"Ditch" 45"x27" oil on canvas














"Mountain" 45"x26" oil on canvas




















"Banana" 19"x17"























"Rest Room" 28"x35"























"Transformer Fire" 26"x34"

Jim

Following in the grand tradition of one name celebrities like Bono, Björk, Cher, Dion, Dido, Enya, Fabio, Falco, Jewel, Moby, Nico, Pelé, Sinbad, Twiggy & Usher (to name a few) I would now like to present to you.... Jim.
Jim is the moniker of an artist who creates ornamental skulls, usually but not exclusively from twine and rope. His work draws on traditional arts from around the world as well as more contemporary arts, suggesting something vaguely religious, possibly ceremonial and to be honest, kind of trippy. I realize that this is not exactly in depth explication, but damn... just look at them. You have to admit that they are very, very cool.
You can see a lot more on his website: www.jim-skullgallery.com

as far as I know they do not have titles nor are exact materials or sizes indicated. I assume they are about the size of a human skull.