Tanya Miller

"Two Trees"  acrylic  2010

"The Road"  oils  2010

"Underwater"  oils  2009

"Nature Morte II"  acrylic on canvas  2008

"Time"  Drawing  2006

This week I thought I'd present some exquisite work on the more whimsical side of things. Fine art is not often associated in people's minds with humor. To which I can only say, too bad for fine art. Tanya Miller channels some of the wit, wisdom and techniques of renaissance masters like Brueghel, Bosch and Arcimboldi. Her work ranges from the straightforward allegory to not so straightforward symbolism and completely disorienting surrealism, with the occasional punchline thrown in for good measure (If you missed it, go back to the top image and look at the expression of the tree on the right - you can click on the image to view it larger). There is a great deal of work on her website, including quite a few paintings in oil, acrylics and watercolor as well as drawings and etchings. Check it out and enjoy. www.tanyamiller.com

This time around I have to thank Monster Brains for posting one of her paintings.

Benjamin Rogers

"inside the painter's studio - painting in the abbreviated field"  2011  Oil on Canvas  45" x 56"

"the hunger artist"  2010  oil on canvas  35" x 42"

"the critique of pure reason"  2012  Oil on Canvas  35" x 42"

2010  oil on canvas  15" x 15"

2011  Charcoal on Paper  50" x 64"

Benjamin Rogers' paintings manage to be both humorous and serious at the same time. Actually they manage a lot of things. They're self-referential, inwardly focused meditations on the mundane life of the artist, and they are references to philosophical ideas and art history. They are executed in a quasi naive manner using simple lines and shapes of color, at times almost cartoon-like, and yet they are sensitively crafted paintings and carefully executed compositions. They capture something about contemporary American culture in which everything on the surface is a little tongue in cheek, a blunt joke or in affectionately poor taste, but hiding just under the surface is a well of heartfelt sincerity and self-examination. Some might call it self-indulgent navel gazing, but with the right dose of self deprecation and honesty, who cares? And with enough talent and intelligence, navel gazing can be a revelatory activity. I'll be excited to see his work progress. You can see more paintings on his website (benjaminrogersart.com) and follow along with his work, his thoughts, and the art that influences him on his blog.

The artist was recently featured on the cover (the cover!) of New American Paintings 99. Congratulations!

Suichi Nakano

"By Sleepiness" [?] 162 x 130.3cm  2010

"Forgetting The Way Home"  oil on wood panel  116.7 x 91cm  2008

"In Preparation for a Picnic"  162 x 130.3cm  2010

"Till Find The Forest"  oil on canvas  91 x 116.7cm  2010

"Luminescence"  oil on canvas  72.7 x 91cm  2002

Suichi Nakano is a Japanese artist pursuing two distinct bodies of work. The first is a series of surrealist montages in which enormous animals of one kind or another occupy an urban environment. In each case there is no sense of any direct impact upon the city. The animals are like enormous spirits lurking through or over the human environment, searching for their own space. The other body of work is an ongoing series of landscapes divided into two categories: during the snow, and after the snow. These are clearly based on direct observation and speak of someone clearly in love with the isolation of cold environs. One piece in the series is called "How to spend the holidays". I imagine the artist living in an urban environment out of necessity and escaping to the far north in winter as often as possible. In the mean time the artist looks out over the buildings and streets of home and envisions the overwhelming presence of nature looming over it all. You can see much more at: nakanoshuichi.com
The English version of the website is not always easy to navigate around, but it's worth the effort.
The artist's work was posted a while back on www.vivianite.net, a website I need to check in with more often.

Marissa Textor

"Trouble in Paradise"  graphite on paper  18" x 16.5"

"Alone Out here"  graphite on paper  28.5" x 43"

"Bent Over Backwards"  16" x 18"

"Pony Swim"  graphite on paper  26" x 36"

"An Outlet For Pent Up Forces"  graphite on paper  11" x 14"

Marissa Textor offers up painstakingly realist graphite drawings that convey the power of nature, which is not always the warm comforting life nourishing force we like to anthropomorphise as a loving mother. Biology is ruthless. And nature is not just biology. It is geology and atmosphere and chemistry and all the forces that shape the world in which we find ourselves. These forces can twist life, bend it, break it, drown it, even snuff it out en masse in minutes. This is not to say that Marissa Textor's work is about destruction and catastrophe. But her interest in nature has more to do with it's vast and unsympathetic power than how artists' have traditionally treated it. She presents wonders. Not lofty hopeful wonders but relentless ones both large and small. And though her work is dramatic it is not the drama of human emotion. It's more staid than that, more clinical and objective. Though the work is clearly based on photography, her exquisite renderings have the same cold distilled alien beauty of electron microscopy.

Her work was featured in New American Paintings (#97) a while back but somehow I overlooked it at the time. That happens a lot I'm afraid. Anyway, check out more of her work at marissatextor.com.