David Molesky

from the series "Owlpocalypse"  6" x 6"  2013

from the series "Owlpocalypse"  6" x 6"  2013

from the series "Owlpocalypse"  6" x 6"  2013

"Polar Weasel"  oil on panel  11" x 14"  2013

David molesky apparently has some big things in the works that I'm looking forward to seeing. But for now I'd like to share some small things he just finished. His series of 50 small owl paintings is subtitled in at least one place "Owls and Flame: Sentinels aloft in a warming world". It's clear that the artist has an affinity for the natural world and a deep concern for the crisis of global climate change (In case you question my choice of the word crisis, just wait). With ever increasing forest fires in the west of North America these images look less like apocalyptic warning and more and more like a response to current events. Either way, the artist creates compelling images through sumptuous brushwork. Whether he's painting flames and billowing smoke, or steam pluming from a geyser or curling waves and foaming spume at the ocean shore, he has a gift for suggesting the movement, surging energy and chaotic power of nature. That power is now shifting, altering in ways we cannot fully predict or control. We are almost certainly responsible, but we are not the only ones who will suffer the consequences.
I first posted some of his work in January, 2011.
To see more work visit his website: davidmolesky.com
Or checkout (and like) his Facebook page.
For a little while you can see a few more owls here. They are currently on display in Pacifica, California at the Sanchez Art Center.

Lu Cong

untitled  watercolor

untitled  watercolor

untitled  watercolor

untitled  watercolor

"Tabitha 11"  oil on panel  18" x 18"  2011

Lu Cong is well known for his haunting and hyper-realistic portraits of young people on the cusp of adulthood (usually girls, but not always). I've included one example here and you can see more on my previous post about his work back in July 2010. But recently he's been posting some sketches on his Flickr page. They're mostly line drawings and exhibit all the skill and and talent that is so abundantly obvious from his paintings. But scattered among them are these few watercolor studies. The loose gestural quality of the medium is a perfect counterpoint to his exquisitely controlled line work. The rough faces with their dark hollowed eyes and incomplete character lends them a quality you don't see in his very personal and empathetic portraits; for these are not portraits of individuals but sketches of animals, studies of the articulation of the limbs of naked primates. I think they're stunning. I don't know if he plans to do more of these or explore watercolor further at all, but maybe if we all bug him and say, "hey, these are awesome", he will and then we can see them and think, "dang, that guy is good" every time.
You can see more of his amazing portrait work on his website: lucong.tumblr.com
and to look all those sketches I mentioned plus other stuff go to the aforementioned Flickr Page.
Oh, and if you happen to be in New york city or Vail, CO go check out his work in person at Gallery Henoch or Vail International Gallery respectively.

Dina Brodsky

"Vacant"  oil on mylar on plexiglass  8x8 inches

"Living Room"  oil on mylar  6x11 inches

"Off Northern Boulevard"  oil on mylar  8x8 inches

"Golden" oil on mylar on plexiglass  8x8 inches

"Trading Post"  oil on mylar  8x8 inches

Dina Brodsky works small. I could easily imagine these paintings large, overwhelming the viewer with their brooding atmosphere of abandonment and decay. But no. They're small. Very small. Sometimes small works get short shrift in the gallery scene. Large crowds cannot gather before a tiny painting and collectively murmur their emotional responses. No. Each individual must wait his or her turn to approach the piece and experience it alone, often leaning forward slightly, perhaps squinting, as if peering into a tiny window on another world that, for a moment anyway, only they can see. How does this effect the kind of vision that Dina Brodsky presents? I can only guess having never seen the work in person. But I like small works. I like that intimacy, the personal connection small finely crafted work demands. These are worlds I want to peer into. They echo those intimate lonely parts within my own heart. Doesn't everyone have a bit of that inside them? That's what these paintings are for. To recognize that part within you that is not only lonely, but defiantly so; that part within us all that no one else can ever quite reach but helps define who we are. I look at these paintings and I can hear the crows cawing and feel the November chill. And to me they seem inviting.

Her website is alas no more. Her galleries have only older or very limited work to view:
Artana Gallery and  Mark Miller Gallery
The best way to see more right now appears to be on her Facebook page or you can see all her work from this year on a temporary(?) wordpress page dinabrodsky.wordpress.com

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