Artist Focus | Me!

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Sorry today's post is up so late. I didn't have an artist in mind for today's artist focus post, so I decided to share my two most recent works with you guys. I mentioned in my first artist about Jan Ironside that she had been what really inspired me for the direction where I wanted to take my paintings, and these are the results!

The first one I did was this one:

I like it. I'm not thrilled with it, but I definitely like it. It was a good starting point to test out a technique that I was unfamiliar with. For a first go at it, I think I did pretty well. I could have achieved more texture in the flowers themselves, so that's what I'm aiming for in my paintings to come.

The next one, I just finished up today:

This one I'm REALLY proud of. The sunflowers actually lift off the page which is what I was going for.

What do you guys think? Any criticism would be helpful!

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Artist Focus | Bob Hunt

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"The actual process of painting, the physical activity of it, the manipulation of the medium and the subconscious imagery that surface are of interest to me. I want to validate my relationship with them but they are suspect. I destroy many of these images trying to articulate the elusive." - Bob Hunt

Bob Hunt's art is abstract and subjective, which I love. The meanings aren't set in stone and the paintings can be whatever they want to each individual viewer. I love being the viewer of art and having the freedom to imagine whatever I desire within it.

I really love his mixture of soft and bold colors with suggestions of geometric shapes. He has quite a bold and unique style. He takes risks and they end up working out extremely well. I could easily see some if his pieces hanging in a future home of mine.

Learn about Bob Hunt and view the rest of his work on his website.

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Artist Focus | Sylvie Guillot

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Another Tuesday, another artist to ramble about. This week it's Sylvie Guillot, a French artist who focuses mainly on the human figure... again, I love any art work that uses the figure as subject matter. It's organic and beautiful and is a work of art in and of itself, why not turn it into a painting or a sculpture or a sketch?

Her works of art appear to be done in a quick, sketch-like fashion, which I love. I learned from my figure drawing professor last semester that making quick sketches of your first impression of a model's pose is the only way to truly capture it - you shouldn't be thinking about the pose, you should be drawing it. Sylvie captures this quick, mindless, and effortless feeling in her paintings, but I think we can all assume that these took her much longer than 5 minutes to complete.

Her knowledge and appreciation of the human form is apparent. She handles each curve with such care and each mark she makes is deliberate and adds something to the painting instead of just being a "dumb mark"

You can view the rest of her collection on her Website.

What subject matter speaks to you the most?

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Artist Focus | Jan Ironside

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I've been struggling creatively for basically this entire semester. I'm in an intermediate painting class this spring, and I took it because I realized I had a deep passion for abstract painting after taking this professor's introduction to painting class. The class requires you to find your "niche", so to speak, in painting, and paint a few works based around this "theme". I put a lot of time, energy, and tears into trying to find references that truly spoke to me, only to come up with nothing each time I thought I found something.

I stumbled across one of Jan Ironside's oil paintings while I was scrolling through tumblr. I was immediately captivated by the intensity of colors she used and her impasto technique. Her subject matter also drew me in: flowers. I always loved drawing flowers, but painting them was never a strength of mine. They're so soft and delicate, and my paintings are usually loud and chaotic.

 

I love how the flowers seem to leap off the page. Something so dainty and fragile is now incredibly textured and in your face. You can purchase her paintings from her Etsy Shop and I highly suggest you snag some of these up! She's incredibly talented and deserves recognition for her beautiful works of art.

She's the inspiration behind the pieces I'm currently working on for my painting class. I'll share them on the blog once they're completed! 

Who are some of your favorite artists?

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