inspiration

May 2, 2012 by Tara 3 Comments

Artur Akopjan‘s work gives me pleasure and inspiration in the same way that the paintings of Jennifer Mercede, Dominique Fortin and Sabrina Ward Harrison do.

The backgrounds are as interesting as the foregrounds, and each painting works as a whole without being either too busy or too quiet. There is also a naive quality which I love.

I particularly enjoy the saturated colours, the drawn and written elements and the patchiness.

I didn’t find too much detail about Akopjan, but the paintings speak for themselves anyway. I found this though:

Creation is equal to complete freedom; everything is acceptable when it comes to art. Artur Akopjan has no special expectations from the viewers.

‘Everything is acceptable when it comes to art’ ~ I like this.

Here is the artist with one of his paintings:

And one of my favourites of his:

Filed Under: artists, love it Tagged With: artists, artur akopjan, inspiration, paintings

February 5, 2012 by Tara 7 Comments

New art love! I am currently swooning over Raina Gentry‘s beautifully subtle, layered paintings. She achieves a softness and a kind of strong delicacy that at the moment I only dream about.

Raina is a California born, but I think Arizona based artist, with a background in printmaking as well as painting, which you can clearly see in her work.

I love her colours, the mix of rough textures and tiny details, the circles and figures, the lightness of touch.

There is something reminiscent of Flora Bowley in her work, with more detail.

In fact her bio talks about her process and it’s clear from that {if it isn’t already!} why I am drawn to her work.

“Each piece evolving naturally and intuitively, with little structure or expectation about the final outcome. Through this organic approach to artmaking, Raina believes that she taps into, and expresses universal themes that many people can identify with. Through complex layering of various media, with a focus on the human form, and nature, she creates meaningful, evocative works that draw her viewers in.”

You can buy prints of these and many many more of her beautiful paintings through her website; I certainly have my eye on one or two…

And in the meantime I’m feasting my eyes for inspiration and with a kind of wistfulness. I dream of achieving this level of skill, this rich symbolism and confidence. Raina’s paintings make me want to work harder at developing my own work, to push it further and allow more to come through.

Filed Under: artists, love it Tagged With: inspiration, love it, Raina Gentry

December 11, 2011 by Tara 4 Comments

Now that it gets dark at 4pm and the light is so shortlived and often not what I would really call ‘light’ anyway, I will quite frankly take all the colour I can get. So I was very pleased to come across the following video via Vivienne, which is both an explosion of colour and a very inspiring four minutes from a lady who makes 90 years old seem like a very exciting proposition.

May we all embrace life in this way when the time comes to ‘stop buying green bananas’.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and also, wow:

Filed Under: colour, youtube Tagged With: inspiration, music, vivienne mcmaster, youtube

November 5, 2011 by Tara 14 Comments

Oh my god you guys. A painting BEAST has been unleashed.

I haven’t been in that kind of a crazed painting state for quite some time. As I type, Small Fearful {who looks like Dobby from Harry Potter actually} is whispering in my ear “Don’t tell them! It’ll go away and you’ll be all creatively sticky and clenched again.”

I laugh in the face of Small. mwAH ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa. {I may regret this later.}

I pulled out a painting that’s been in a state of semi-finishedness for freaking ages yesterday, with that kind of reckless, devil may care, ‘well it’s been going nowhere for ages so I can’t really mess it up by playing around with it’ vibe that sometimes overcomes me. {Any ideas on how to make that one stick around?!}

Then I pulled some of Flora Bowley’s techniques out of my metaphorical painting tool kit and set to work painting without thinking, alternating between lines and dots and random flourishes.

I started to really like what I was doing {Happy Bonus #1}. Then I spent some time turning it round and round, looking for what to pull out and what was ready to be covered.

I knew I wanted a figure in there; I did toy briefly with some kind of foliage inspired shapery but to be perfectly honest, I’ve seen rather a lot of that about lately, and besides, figures are my thing {and of course I’ve seen none of those}. I rooted about in my art college portfolio, since that’s how long it’s been since I did any life drawing {11 years in fact}, to see if I could find anything inspiring. And lo, {Happy Bonus #2}, I found the following:

{this is me in thinner days, when my work across all disciplines was figurative and I also had use of a darkroom.

i made my boyfriend at the time take some photos for me to work from. I think he was ok with it. }

{i drew this! i kind of freaked out with joy when i found it cause it restored my faith in my ability to draw

with an element of realism. Happy Bonus #3}

{this is NOT me, but i found it with the other one and loved the composition so i kept it out for possible future use}

Anyway, back to my story. The painting in question was this one:

Which may or may not have previously been this one: { I actually can’t remember but I can’t find it so this must be it!} You may remember it from a while back. {At least, I thought I’d posted about it but can’t find it just now.} At any rate, it started life looking VERY different…

So here’s what happened yesterday:

At this point I knew it was time for some shapes. Which was the point where I unearthed the photo and charcoal drawings. And I thought, you know what, I’m just going to go in there with the black paint and see what comes out. Nothing too contrived or planned out or copied. I was quite scared at that point actually; I knew I could easily bugger it all up. But I thought about this Art Every Day thing and got over myself.

And there was a lady with a beautiful dress! {Happy Bonus #4}

Look at her swirling and twirling. So yeah, this is where we’re at now.

Stuck.

But confident of further inspiration. {Bugger off Small.}

Filed Under: acrylic painting, AEDM, intuitive painting, painting, paintings Tagged With: charcoal drawings, dress, inspiration, painting, photo, woman

September 26, 2011 by Tara 3 Comments

Well, if an enormous room filled to the brim with beautiful, challenging and inspiring art work doesn’t get me going again, quite frankly I’m not sure what will. On Saturday I went to the Brighton Art Fair with a friend and it certainly shifted something that’s been rather dormant lately.

There were quite a few known-to-me artists there, including Daniel Ablitt {I own two of his magical forest paintings} and Sheila Marlborough, about whom I did a little Love It post a while back; we had a lovely chat about technique and process and subject matter. I so very nearly bought one of her paintings, but sadly pragmatism had to take precedence.

However, discussing painting is definitely one way to get me champing at the bit to actually DO some; I’ve been told my whole demeanour changes once I start to talk about it! I still haven’t done any painting yet but did at least start a pastel drawing in my outdoor studio yesterday. It’s by no means finished but was really a way to start creating a language for myself using ‘flattened maps’,{my term}; I was experimenting with how I might depict certain things in a landscape, or suggest composition. Sheila’s work was in my head, as was Dawn Stacey’s; I wrote about her too a while ago.

Many artists draw on their travels as inspiration for their paintings. {Pun intended, I guess!} While I was doing this pastel drawing I was thinking about that, and how I might translate my own experiences onto the page. I have quite a well stocked toolkit of techniques to use when pulling a painting together, but I don’t often include personal experiences, memories or dreams, which is weird now I think about it. Something to ponder on, while I hang in this strange limbo land I’m in at the moment.

Filed Under: art development, artists Tagged With: brighton art fair, daniel ablitt, dawn stacey, inspiration, painting, pastel drawing, sheila marlborough