1.14.2006

Traditional painting

I post links to a fair bit of illustration and digital art, but this time around I'd like to share a sampling of artists who work with good old-fashioned brushes and canvas and paint to create some lovely, and odd, things.

I was introduced today to the work of Colette Calascione, and was immediately taken. I can only describe her paintings as a graceful, eerie blend of surrealism, Northern Renaissance, magic realism, and wry humor. I especially liked those paintings whose spare, clean lines and odd juxtapositions reminded me strongly of Magritte.
Via Thee Temple Ov Psychick Blah.




Will Wilson is a very versatile painter, equally at home painting a traditional fruit-and-jug tabletop still life, or a portrait of an M-16-toting teenage soldier in a pink bra. His subjects range from the mythic to the modern and mundane, but what I especially like are the curiously-piled artifacts that comprise his still lifes, and several of his more surreal figure paintings.
Via All about nothing.




The pale, empty dreamscapes of Michael Parkes are populated by lithe, winged angels gliding about in fluttering robes and in the nude, fantastical creatures, swans, plump dwarves in ornate coats, and tall gentlemen in dark suits. The bio page speaks of his art as a place where "metaphysical and spiritual elements are joined into reality. His work evokes a mysterious atmosphere, which can often only be deciphered with the help of ancient mythology and eastern philosophy. In the fantasy world of Parkes the laws of earthly reality are abolished, and space and time enter into their own motionless communion." But mostly it is about the nude angels.




I can't do better than Phantasmaphile at describing the paintings of Cristina Vergano, which are "like wandering through the Museum of Natural History during Victorian times. On acid."


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7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous:

I love it! Makes me want to buy the prints.

22:20  
Blogger Jess Haskins:

Adam: That Tansey painting is really neat. And Parkes does seem to be rather one-note, doesn't he?

Ladysusan: Which artist?

01:46  
Anonymous Anonymous:

Well, all of them, really. But I especially like Collette Calascione's bird and Cristina Vergano's clouds.

14:31  
Blogger Jess Haskins:

Yes, I was especially enamored of that bird. I knew you'd like her, too.

00:01  
Anonymous Anonymous:

Great links! Collette Calascione's paintings are very interesting and although I certainly see the René Magritte connection she paints so much better than Magritte (whose work is often pretty amateurish). I don't have any references here but isn't "Dream of the Hungry Ghost" a copy of a fairly well-known Max Ernst collage?

09:08  
Anonymous Anonymous:

This isn't quite what I was looking for but:

http://www.soerenjessen.com/maxernst.html

09:10  
Blogger Jess Haskins:

Very interesting! I guess this proves that she has even more surrealist influence in her work than I thought.

10:29  

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