love it

March 22, 2013 by Tara 3 Comments

Eli {short for Elizabeth} Halpin’s work is awesome. Bold, bright, often shiny and shimmery, and most commonly featuring some element of nature, usually animals or plants, although sometimes people and cupcakes too. A walrus with unexpectedly stripy tusks. A bunny burping {prettiest burp I’VE ever seen}. Cute pairs of animals and majestic solo beasts.

I don’t use the word awesome lightly. Well, sometimes I do, but not today. Eli’s work inspires me to break rules, particularly the kind that say a walrus’s tusks could never be stripy, or that the howls of wolves can’t look like love hearts.

In her own words:

My name is Eli, short for Elizabeth. I grew up in Alaska and now live in Austin Texas.

These paintings are about food, sharing, living together, working together and the cycle of life.

They are made on recycled wood doors with thick oil paint and sometimes acrylic, spray paint, metals, mica, glass, fabric, sand, gemstones, pearls, and found objects.

My favorite subjects to paint are paws, cheeks, whiskers, horns, tusks and claws.

Unsurprisingly, Eli’s work is widely available in galleries and stores, and she is clearly prolific. You can find her on her website, blog, and also various other places online, to which you will find links on her website.

If your day could do with an injection of colour and humour, I highly recommend a visit.

Filed Under: artists, love it Tagged With: artists, eli halpin, love it

February 4, 2013 by Tara 3 Comments

I think I first found Wendy McWilliams‘ work on Pinterest, as is often the case. {Once in, it becomes almost impossible to stop scrolling. I know I am not alone in this. } Her work always catches my eye, with its bright colours and dynamic abstract compositions.

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I’m quite heavily into creating this kind of painting myself lately {with some added symbolism}, so it is particularly compelling to me.

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Wendy says:

Uninhibited and free is how I approach my canvas..always trying new styles and discovery of self, and different ways to apply paint and other mediums to make a beautiful piece of art. Every piece of art I create has my heart and a piece of my soul inside and radiating outward from the canvas, it is my fondest wish that you receive as much pleasure viewing my artwork as I did creating it.

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I haven’t found much {any} extra info or background on Wendy, so I’ll just let her paintings speak for themselves.

To see more, get thee to her website. Or to Pinterest.

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Edit: sorries, the images all seem to have got stretched! Apparently it’s either that or have them annoyingly tiny. Oh technology, why do you hate me so?

Filed Under: artists, love it Tagged With: abstract art, love it, wendy mcwilliams

January 22, 2013 by Tara 5 Comments

When I first saw Jeanne Bessette‘s work I was SO EXCITED. Her work lights up something inside me. The vibrant colours and the figures, the shapes and just the feel of each painting give me so much pleasure.

Then I started following her on Facebook and realised I love her attitude and approach to art and life.

As she says on her website:

Painting for me is not an occupation it’s a pre-occupation, I guess you could say I self medicate with paint.

Jeanne was a successful photographer for some time before returning to her original love, painting, and says her photography experience has taught her about light and composition. She also makes use of layering and plenty of vibrant colour, which is part of what initially drew me in to her paintings.

About her process, she says:

I’m mostly interested in the essence of life rather than replicating what I’m seeing, which is why I paint in an abstract way and I consider my approach more intuitive than methodical as I am often responding to the last thing I put on the canvas. At some point something magical begins to emerge and I start to see where I need go. I layer and glaze and scratch and draw. I often scribble and scrape my way through to the layers underneath then glaze over and continue on when it is dry. My glazing techniques create a luminosity and depth in my paintings that make you feel like you could step into them. I love the way paint feels so I often paint with my fingers, sponges and rags. Finding paint under my fingernails at a dinner party is not uncommon for me. My friends don’t seem to mind.

Her work reminds me a little of Robert Burridge‘s, and maybe, dare I say it, my own! {Although I have quite some way to go before reaching that level of finesse. }

I like also what she says about her style; it reminds me that I don’t have to struggle so much with my own diversity in what I produce:

I love lots and lots of pungent color and contrast but have learned through the years that sometimes the most subtle changes can be the most powerful. So I paint both contrasty, in your face paintings and quiet emotional pieces. They are both a part of me.

Apologies for the piddlingly small images and the continuing issue with post titles. Technology and I are NOT friends at the moment. To see Jeanne’s work in full glorious colour, I recommend a good poke around her luscious website.

Edit: I just found this fantastic video on YouTube of Jeanne in action. Feast your eyes.

Filed Under: artists, love it, Uncategorized Tagged With: jeanne bessette, love it

November 22, 2012 by Tara 5 Comments

I’m in heaven! Would you just look at these paintings!

Richly textured, layered with colours, papers, fabrics, shapes, abstractedly figurative…

…and brilliantly named. The one above? Our Lady Of Relentless Urban Development.

Look at the drips, the recurring patterns reminiscent of Klimt, collage elements, beautiful line drawings.

I can find almost nothing about Angie Brown herself, but I am happy to just absorb the visual feasts that are her paintings.

And these peeks into her sketchbooks. I have total sketchbook envy.

Oh wait, I just discovered her Pinterest page, where she says this:

i am a visual communications professional, specializing in digital media by day & mixed media collage by night. i made my own internets, and it lives at www.galacticbloom.com.

I am so inspired by this work. Clever and beautiful, my favourite combination.

Filed Under: artists, love it Tagged With: angie brown artist, love it, mixed media paintings

April 5, 2012 by Tara

If you’re a regular round here you’ll already know I love Canada based artist Maria Pace-Wynters‘ vibrant, beautiful paintings. I was recently so inspired by her style of portraiture that I was moved to create a painting of my own in a similar vein.

Like many of us, she has been making art since childhood, and also perhaps like many of us found that growing up led her away from the natural spontenaity and non judgement of childhood creating, that ‘life’ just sort of took over. Thankfully she didn’t let it stop her! She includes this quote on both her website and Etsy shop profile as a great reminder:

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

Apart from the glorious colours, I really admire how she has perfected the balance between loose lines and colour patches, and detailed focused areas.

Also her heavenly, voluptuous flowers and foliage, particularly poppies. There is something so luxurious and decadent about her paintings.

As a mother her daughters are clearly a source of inspiration to her ~ many of her paintings feature impish young faces. The circus is also a common theme.

She has plenty of options available in her Etsy shop, from originals to postcards and art print blocks.

Filed Under: art, artists, love it, portraits Tagged With: love it, maria pace wynters, mixed media artists, portraits

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 2, 2011 by Tara 4 Comments

Dominique Fortin is a Montreal artist who creates a balance of figure, symbolism and abstraction that I really love. Some elements of her work also remind me of Sabrina Ward Harrison’s scratchy pencil marks and scrawled words.

She seems to mostly use mixed media on wood, with recurring themes of dancers, birds, animals and children. As it says on the website of one of the galleries that represent her, her paintings show “a dream-like representation of the human character.” If you’ve read previous ‘Love It’ posts I’ve done, you’ll know I tend to choose artists whose work often looks like dreams.

From her own website: “Dominique’s creative process involves a great variety of techniques : collagraphy, scratching, projection, running paint, gilding, stencilling and image transferring, all enhanced by fabrics and other materials assembled in pictorial layers. Each painting offers the viewer multiple interpretations and as one gets closer, a variety of textures and symbols that were as yet invisible are revealed.”

That final sentence sounds a lot like what is in my artist statement, and therefore what I do in my own work.

I really love the colours of this painting below and the enormous sweeping dress. {Enormous sweeping dresses are something I am embracing lately!}

Here she is in her studio. I LOVE to see artists in their natural habitat.

A fair amount of her paintings are monochromatic, but you know me, all about the vibrant colour.

The artists whose work I’m drawn to these days are all story tellers. I so long to be a story teller, but I think it’s something that needs time to grow.

Filed Under: art, artists, love it, mixed media art Tagged With: dominique fortin, love it, mixed media art

October 25, 2011 by Tara 5 Comments

Another artist who paints abstract and figurative art to beautiful effect, I found Erin Ashley‘s work, as I sometimes do, via Pinterest. She lives in Florida with her husband and two children.

I relate to the way she works, and aspire to the outcome!

I begin my work without any preconceived ideas at all what the finished work is going to look like. I like the idea of each painting being a journey, ending at a beautiful destination. My paintings are made with lots of colour and textures, bringing out the old with the new.

So much gorgeous texture and layering, and I love the colour combinations too. I see familiar elements in there – drips, numbers, collage, scratched and scribbled areas, stamps and stencils.

This one has such beautiful colours, it totally inspires me to try something similar. {Still hankering to create something light and soft.}

Erin is also self taught. It’s becoming more and more clear to me that there is no need to have pieces of paper and years of official study under your belt in order to ‘succeed’ {whatever that means} as an artist. I wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had trained or not, looking at these paintings, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. That is not {before I evoke indignation} to say that formally studying art has no value. Just not necessarily to me.

I love everything about this piece; the composition within the outline, the colours, the softened edges, the patches of detail against areas of loose shape and colour. The one below too.

Erin has had a lot of work published and appears to be quite well known, although she is new to me.

Ach, look at this ~ beautiful colours, fab composition, simplified but so thoughtful. Makes me think of an angel.

This is another of my favourites. I’m sure you can’t guess why. It’s luminous!

You can buy prints of her work, and be inspired by many many more examples of it in her Imagekind shop.

Filed Under: artists, love it, mixed media art, mixed media painting Tagged With: artist, erin ashley, love it, painitngs

October 3, 2011 by Tara 1 Comment

In keeping with the theme of my re-emerging love for figurative art, have a look at these paintings by Jylian Agustlin.

She is a Californian artist and the images I’ve chosen here do not do justice to the breadth of her talent.

She can do landscapes, stitched images, figurative, abstract and architectural work; she’s even done a series on the Fibonacci mathematical theories. Diverse, to say the least!

What I love about this, apart from getting to look at beautiful art, is that seeing an artist’s website covering such a broad range is one of those things that makes me feel I have ‘permission’ to embrace diversity in my own work. I’m still learning on the giving myself permission thing, so I love it quite a lot when I find someone else to do it for me.

From her website we learn:

Jylian uniquely combines the effects of modern technology with traditional techniques. While painting in acrylic and oil paints, her artwork often conveys the same complex layered effects possible in computer programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Gustlin experiments with a variety of materials to discover their effects. Working with two-part epoxy resin, oil and acrylic paints, charcoal, wax, gold leaf, pastel and graphite on board, Gustlin draws, paints, scratches on her surfaces.

I really love this one below; the simplicity and beauty of the figure, its wings and position on the piece, the different elements used, the text, the colours, everything:

I’ve been very busy enjoying the Indian Summer that suddenly arrived and done no painting for what must be coming up for three weeks now, which is very unsual for me. It bothers me not one tiny bit! But looking at these luscious, textural, colourful paintings is helping me ease back in. Or it will do. At some point.

Filed Under: art, love it, painting Tagged With: artist, figurative painting, jylian gustlin, love it, painter, paintings

September 13, 2011 by Tara 3 Comments

I found Ademaro Bardelli through some meanderings on Facebook (not all who wander are lost, indeed).

Lately I’m really yearning to get back to my figurative roots, so to speak. I used to do a lot of work involving figures, especially at school and art college; I adored life drawing and keep saying I’ll find a class. I’ve found several in fact, but haven’t actually been to one yet.

And of course I’m being drawn to figurative work by other artists more and more. My favourite is the kind that really uses the whole page/canvas. Composition that uses the shapes almost to abstraction give me that excited feeling in my stomach, you know?

Anyway, Signore Bardelli’s paintings are prodding at me to work with the figure again, as Karen Griffiths’ did recently.There’s a real mixed media feel and I love the soft-yet-bright colours, the drips and patches, the feeling of looking at these women through coloured filters.

I found the English translation of his biography strangely touching:

Ademaro Bardelli was born in Florence in December 22 1934.
He lives and works in Tuscany and has been involved in art since 1956.

He attended the Art Institute of Florence from 1949 to 1953.

After military service, he travelled abroad, in Belgium, working in a coalmine in Switzerland, in France, doing all kinds of activities, such as porter, quarrier, docker, waiter etc.

Back in Italy in 1956 he started his professional artistic activity.

He has died on January 30th 2010, in Barberino di Mugello.

Florence has a special place in my heart since I spent a month of my Gap Year there studying fine art at the British Institute; a dream of an experience, and a very long time ago! We did intensive figure drawing there, I will never forget it. Mine were nothing like this, but that figurative artist is still in me, and still loves beautiful paintings like these.

Filed Under: artists, love it, paintings Tagged With: ademaro bardelli, artist, figurative art, love it, painter