Here’s some stuff that I began but never really finished amidst the chaos of piling work. Hopefully, once I finish these I can begin working on interesting things… as I am slowly edging towards the anatomy of animate/inanimate objects (but that stuff won’t see the light of day until my buildings stop looking like Lego castles and hands become noticeably distinguishable from feet ;)) Oh yeah, and I threw a random crayon collage in. While edible looking, crayons are crazy to work with and manipulate. I now have mad respect for people like this. Needless to say I also empathize with the plight of 5-year-olds.
Borders are scratched across the hearts of men,
by strangers with a calm, judicial pen,
and when the borders bleed we watch with dread
the lines of ink along the map turn red. - Marya Mannes
Border Crossing (front and reverse)
Bob Haozous
1991
I wanted to share the links to some online artists whose works I enjoy tremendously. Each of these individuals, with their unique styles and influences, seems to be breaking barriers in artistic creativity.
From his site: “Born in Dallas, Texas 1966, Ron English ‘paints, infiltrates, reinvents and satirizes modern culture and its mainstream visual iconography on canvas, in song, and directly onto hundreds of pirated billboards. English exists spiritually somewhere between a cartoon Abbie Hoffman and a grown-up, real-life Bart Simpson, delivering a steady stream of customized imagery laden with strong sociopolitical undertones, adolescent boy humor, subversive media savvy, and Dali-meets-Disney technique. Dedicated to finding the sublime in the everyday and breaking the momentum of the didactic approach to art and life, English offers up an alternative universe where nothing is sacred, everything is subverted, and there is always room for a little good-natured fun.’ ”
In his own words: “I’ve loved art from the time I was a little kid– especially comic books. When I got older, I actually got a chance to draw my childhood heroes– and got paid to boot. It was a dream come true. I was asked to paint spiderman swinging over New York and Wolverine slashing robots with his unbreakable claws. My job was to make these heroes real for all the people who loved them. It wasn’t easy but I learned to make them colorful, detailed and full of action. Comics, however, weren’t the only thing I painted– I also painted monsters for Universal Studios, but those monsters weren’t as cool as the ones I saw lurking in my niece’s sketches. It was then, at age 33, that I decided to take all the lessons about color, action and detail and apply them to little kid’s drawings. It made me remember my childhood and also realize that no matter how old I became I could always see things like a child.”
In her own words: “I’m American, I’m Jewish. I live and work in the West Bank, occupied Palestine where I teach art to kids, draw cartoons for the Palestine Times, paint murals, perform a circus routine for detained Palestinians at checkpoints, train volunteers in non-violent resistance and crisis intervention and generally try my best to stick it to tha man. No the Palestinians haven’t slit my throat, no they don’t hate Americans, no one has tried to push me into the sea yet. I’m also an artist and I draw and paint the life here… Five years ago I made my first trip to Israel. I worked on a kibbutz in the northern Galilee for three months where I learned and lived the Israeli side of the story. Now I am learning and living the Palestinian side. Anyone who comes to the conclusion that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is two equal sides squabbling over a piece of land is profoundly mistaken.”
I’ve never used color before (at least since grade one). On the the twenty hour train ride, most of which was actually quite pleasant, I had the fortune of spending the day part of the trip staring out at the monochrome, desolate and rather morbid New Brunswick landscape. Supplied with four pencil crayons, shades ranging from black to yellow to bright red, I decided to give colour a try. Colouring is a lot more fun than I expected, hopefully I’ll become more comfortable and versatile in the future, and may be move on to a real canvas! *gasp*
Something random I drew last week, a new addition to my very slowly growing sketch gallery, aptly named “the music, the moment”… the source happens to be my current ringtone.
I’ve put up a few of my drawings over here, including–
The Phantom
23×26 inches (58×68cm) This one is pretty self-explanatory. A good movie, an excellent musical (which I’d like to see by the way– if anyone has extra tickets lying around), and a brilliant book!
And The Collage which I originally intended to call “La femme sacrée” or “Le voyage de la femme”. I am actually very fond of this piece because it was very personal to me in terms of its symbolism, and I learnt a lot of new techniques while working on it (shading metals—what a pain, but worthwhile).
A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner. — Unknown
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Ce sont les commentaires extraordinaires d'une étudiante, random rants of an observer of the world, and the sometimes ecstatic, sometimes sardonic, sometimes frustrated, sometimes profound insights of an artist, a scientist, a historian, an environmentalist, an activist, a humanitarian, a technophile, and a lone autocrat. And yes, though I am a second year student living in urban Montréal... I am on the verge of figuring out the meaning of life. More »
sometimes profound insights of an artist, a scientist, a historian, an environmentalist, an activist, a humanitarian, a technophile, and a lone autocrat. And yes, though I am a second year student living in urban Montréal... I am on the verge of figuring out the meaning of life.
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