Artist Focus | Cara Thayer and Louie Van Patten

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This week's artists are Cara Thayer and Louie Van Patten. Again, my infinite scrolling was brought to a halt when I saw one of their paintings on tumbr. I love any type of artwork that showcases the human figure in it's purest, and rawest (is that a word?) form. Their collaborative work does just this and SO much more.

Thayer and Van Patten so intelligently capture movement, emotion, and depth in their collaborative art work. You feel as if you're sitting with the subject of the art rather than just looking at it. You can almost feel what the figure is feeling, both emotionally and in a physical sense as well. They eplain their collaborative process in a perfect little blurb on their website:

"One of our goals has always been to paint with the intention of the finished work resembling that of an individual painter. In trying to find a common inspiration with each other, we discovered that it is very difficult to define who you are to another person and explain your feelings with any kind of consistency, let alone authenticity. When you attempt to define yourself with conviction, you can easily attach yourself to an unsustainable perspective. Furthermore, as our lives are driven by self-definition, what we understand to be authentic is constantly in flux, regardless of intention. In our work, we have become interested in these ideas being personified in paint. What is the face of self-mythologizing? What is comfort? Can the counterfeit be as effective as the real thing? Or is something like comfort simply defined by how we define ourselves? These are questions that we feel are better suited to be asked with paint, rather than words."

Here are some of my favorites of their collaborative paintings:

Amazing right?

You can learn more about them and their collaborative process on their Website

You can purchase their paintings from their Etsy Shop

You can view more of their artwork on their Blogspot and Bluecanvas

What's your favorite media to create art with? Painting? Sculpture? Pen and Ink? 

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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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