Daily Art Fixx - Art Blog: Modern Art, Art History, Painting, Illustration, Photography, Sculpture » Women in Visual Arts

Meredith Dittmar: Now You See It, Now You Don’t @ FIFTY24MX Gallery

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:00:44 +0000

American sculptor Meredith Dittmar’s (featured) latest exhibition “Now You See It, Now You Don’t” is a collection of works made over a 15 month period. “During that time, my husband and I did IVF to get pregnant, my father had a severe stroke at 67 rendering him paralyzed and brain damaged for 14 months, my twin sons were born at 26 weeks gestation and spent three months in the NICU. Eventually my father passed away and today our sons are a year old, happy and healthy and beating the odds. This period brought in full force, the beautiful intensity of the human story – the cycle of life death. “

Dittmar’s polymer clay sculptures depict human-animal-plant-energy amalgams that contain threads of common elements and colors to express deep levels of union across themes of biology, technology, and consciousness.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t runs through January 21, 2012 at FIFTY24MX Gallery in Mexico City.

To see more, visit CorporatePig.com.

Remedios Varo: 1908-1963

Wendy Campbell — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:00:50 +0000

Born on December 16, 1908, in Anglés, near Girona, Spain, Remedios Varo is often overlooked as an important surrealist painter. As a child, Varo moved frequently with her family, following her father’s work as a hydraulic engineer.

Varo studied art in Madrid and moved several times between Paris and Spain where she met and exhibited with other leading Surrealist artists. She met her husband, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, in Barcelona. In 1941, Varo and Péret fled the Nazi occupation in Paris and moved to Mexico City where many other Surrealists had sought exile.

Varo separated from Péret and initially worked as a commercial artist and illustrator in Mexico City. At the encouragement of Walter Gruen, Austrian exile and businessman, she was able to devote herself full time to painting for the last eleven years of her life. Her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Diana in 1955 was a great success and earned her international recognition.

Varo became skilled in Surrealist Automatism, a practice where several artists work together to devise unforeseen subjects with smoke or wax on paper or canvas. Varo’s palette consisted mainly of somber oranges, light browns, shadowy grays and greens. Her paintings were carefully drawn, and depicted stories or mystic legends. She often painted heroines engaged in alchemical activities. “A delicate figure may spin and weave tiny threads transforming them into musical instruments or fashion them into paintings of small birds. The settings are often medieval tower rooms equipped with occult laboratory devices.”

Varo was influenced by artists such as Francisco Goya, El Greco, Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Braque, pre-Columbian art, and the writing of André Breton. She also borrowed from Romanesque Catalan frescoes and medieval architecture, mixed nature and technology, and combined reality and fantasy to create paintings that defied time and space.

Varo was also influenced by a variety of mystic and hermetic traditions. She was interested in the ideas of C. G. Jung and the theories of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, Helena Blavatsky, Meister Eckhart, and the Sufis. She was also fascinated with the legend of the Holy Grail, sacred geometry, alchemy and the I-Ching. She saw in each of these an avenue to self-knowledge and the transformation of consciousness.

Remedios Varo died of a heart attack at the height of her fame in her home in Mexico City on October 8, 1963. Since that time, her works have been seen in over a dozen solo exhibitions and nearly one hundred group shows worldwide.

Remedios Varo on Amazon

Sources: Ciudad de la Pintura (images), Wikipedia, NMWA

Cake: Street Art

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:00:12 +0000

New York based artist Cake studied painting at the Pratt institute and began taking her art to the street about three years ago. “Using Street Art as a therapy of watercolors and illustrative line drawings, Cake brings people from her life to the street, delicately addressing issues like illness, addiction and disconnection. With anatomical diagrams and faces, bodies, and gestures as descriptors, Cake explores human suffering and familial relationships in her wheat-pasted paintings with frank stillness, drifting occasionally into drama. ~ Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo”(from Juxtapoz)

To see more (including her studio work), visit CakeStreetArt.com or check out her photostream on Flickr. There is also a good bio story on Robots Will Kill.

Faith Ringgold: Painting, Fiber Art, Sculpture

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:00:38 +0000

Born on October 8, 1930, in Harlem, New York, Faith Ringgold is considered to be one of the most important living African American artists. Working in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, and performance, Ringgold is best known for her “story quilts” that combine narrative paintings with quilted borders and text.

Ringgold’s mother, a fashion designer and seamstress, nurtured her creative abilities from a young age. Ringgold attended City College of New York where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and Education in 1955. She taught art in New York’s public schools from 1955–1973 and earned her Master’s degree in art in 1959. During this time, Ringgold also married and divorced jazz pianist Robert Earl Wallace with whom she had two daughters. In 1962, she was remarried to Burdette Ringgold.

Ringgold’s oil paintings and posters of the mid-to-late 1960s carried strong political messages and were supportive of the civil-rights movement. In 1970 she participated in a demonstration against the exclusion of black and women artists by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. This resulted in the inclusion of Betye Saar and Barbara Chase-Riboud in the Whitney Sculpture Biennial, making them the first black women ever to exhibit at the Museum.

In the early 1970s Ringgold abandoned traditional painting and began making unstretched acrylic paintings on canvas with soft cloth frames after viewing an exhibition of Tibetan art at the Rijk Museum in Amsterdam. During this time, Ringgold also began lecture tours and traveling exhibitions to colleges and universities around the United States. In 1973, she retired from teaching altogether to continue touring and create art full time.

In 1983 Ringgold began to combine images and handwritten text in her painted “story quilts,” which conveyed imaginative narratives. In 1984, a 20-year retrospective of her work was held at The Studio Museum in Harlem. That same year, Ringgold also became a professor at the University of California, San Diego, a position that she still holds today.

Over the course of her career, Ringgold has published 12 children’s books including the award winning “Tar Beach” which is based on her story quilt. As well, a book of her memoirs was published in 1995. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ringgold is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art.

Retrospectives of Ringgold’s work have been held by Rutgers University, New Brunswick (1973), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1984), and the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead (1990). Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions devoted to political art, women’s art, contemporary quilts, and African-American art, as well as in the Whitney Biennial (1985). Ringgold has received many honours, including the National Endowment for the Arts awards in sculpture (1978) and painting (1989), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1987), and fifteen honorary doctorates.

Ringgold currently lives and works in La Jolla, California, and Englewood, New Jersey. For more information, visit Faith Ringgold.com.

Sources: Guggenheim, Faith Ringgold.com

Annie Leibovitz: Photography

Wendy Campbell — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:00:13 +0000

Born on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut, Annie Leibovitz has been documenting American popular culture since the 1970′s and is one of the most sought after portrait photographers today.

The Leibovitz family moved frequently with her father’s duty assignments in the US Air Force and Annie took her first photos when they were stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and after a summer trip to Japan with her mother, she began taking night classes in photography and continued developing her skills as a photographer. Early influences include Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In 1970, Leibovitz approached the editor of the recently launched Rolling Stone Magazine for employment. Her first assignment was a photo shoot with John Lennon and her photo appeared on the January 1971 issue. Leibovitz was named chief photographer two years later.

In 1980, Leibovitz was sent to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono and created the now famous Lennon nude curled around a fully clothed Ono. Several hours after the photo shoot, Lennon was shot and killed. The photograph ran on the cover of Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue and in 2005 was named best magazine cover from the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

In 1983, Leibovitz became a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair Magazine and became known for her provocative celebrity portraits including Whoopie Goldberg, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, Queen Elizabeth II, and countless others. Her portraits have also been featured in national media including Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, as well as media ads for American Express, the Gap, and the Milk Board.

Leibovitz began a long-term romantic relationship with writer Susan Sontag in 1989. Sontag had a strong influence on her work including her photos documenting the Balkan war in Sarajevo and “Women”, a book they published together in 2000. The couple lived apart but maintained a close relationship until Sontag’s death in 2004.

Leibovitz has received numerous awards including a Commandeur des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government as well as designation as a living legend by the Library of Congress. In 1991, she had her first museum show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. – a show that toured internationally for six years.

With several book publications under her belt, Leibovitz’s most recent book “A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005″ features her trademark celebrity portraits as well as personal photographs from her own life.

Leibovitz has three children, Sarah Cameron who was born when Leibovitz was 51 years old, and twins Susan and Samuelle who were born to a surrogate mother in May 2005.

To see more of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs visit Contact Press. If you get the chance, there is a fantastic PBS documentary called “Annie Leibovitz, Life Through a Lens” that features interviews from celebrities and with the photographer about the her work over the last few decades.

Sources: PBS, Wikipedia

Alma Thomas: 1891-1978 – Abstract Art

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:00:29 +0000

Born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, Alma Woodsey Thomas grew up in a family that encouraged education and appreciation of literature and the arts. In 1907, the family moved to Washington D.C., partly due to the Atlanta race riots, but also because Washington had better education and employment opportunities for African Americans than most other cities at the time. That same year, Thomas enrolled at Armstrong Manual Training High School where she excelled at math, and was exposed to the visual arts.

Thomas attended Miner Normal School (today, the University of the District of Columbia) in 1911 studying kindergarten education. She received her teaching certificate in 1913 after which she taught for four years at Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington Delaware. Thomas returned to Washington in 1921 to study home economics at Howard University. Initially intending to pursue a career as a costume designer, she switched her studies to the newly created fine arts department and in 1924, became the first graduate of the program.

In 1925, Thomas began working as an art instructor at Shaw Junior High School in Washington D.C. – a career which she would remain at for 35 years. With a desire to cultivate appreciation for art in young people, Thomas organized the School arts League based at Shaw as well as organizing the school’s first art gallery.

Between 1930 and 1934, Thomas earned her masters degree in fine arts education from the teachers college at Columbia University. In 1943, she was vice-president of the Barnett Aden Gallery – the first private gallery to welcome art created by artists of any race, colour, or creed. While there, Thomas was able to increase her awareness of art trends and directions. As well, she was involved with the Little Paris Studio where artists met and worked together, improving their skills, exchanging critiques, and holding exhibitions.

Thomas initially painted realistic images but moved toward abstract painting in 1950, when at the age of 59, she returned to school taking art classes at the American University. She studied with Robert Gates, Ben Summerford, and well known painter Jacob Kainen with whom she became close friends. A passion for learning, Thomas continued her evening and weekend classes for ten years. During that time, her painting evolved from realism to cubism, abstract impressionism, and finally her own style of abstract art.

In 1960, Thomas retired from teaching to focus exclusively on her art. Her primary inspirations were her observations of nature and the abstract patterns of light created when shining through flowers and plants. Her paintings reflected this with their bold colours and short jagged brush strokes.

Thomas’s work began receiving recognition in the late 60′s and early 70′s. She had solo exhibitions at Howard and Fist Universities, at the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington, and was included in the US Department of States Art in Embassies Program. In 1972, she was the first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

From the 1970′s onward, Thomas minimized the number of colours in her paintings and experimented with optical effects. Her brush strokes had the appearance of wedges and commas and created rhythmic patterns that often resembled mosaics. During these last years of her life, Thomas was challenged by arthritis and deteriorating eyesight, but she continued painting, drawing on nature and music for inspiration, up until her last days.

Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978 in Washington D.C. from complications following surgery. Today, her paintings are on display in major art museums and university galleries across the United States.

Sources: Alma W. Thomas: A Retrospective of the Paintings, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Alma Thomas on Amazon.com

Bobbie Russon: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:00:43 +0000

Born in 1966, London, UK based artist paints the transition from childhood to adulthood, mapping a path of loss, awkward self-awareness and developing sexuality.

“When I work it starts almost like a form of meditation, drawing is a way to work directly from the subconscious onto paper, paintings then follow. There are recurring elements in my work, most notably the loss of innocence and awkward self awareness of a child becoming an adult. There is a loneliness to my paintings, something I felt very acutely growing up as an only child and seem unable to shake. dolls or animals rather than other humans feature as companions with their almost human-like but dumb, false understanding. If I can evoke a memory or emotion in a stranger by my own personal interpretation of a shared but private experience without having to use words then I feel I am succeeding.”

Russon’s solo exhibition “Tea and Camphor” runs through October 2011 at bo-lee Gallery in Bath, UK.

See more of Russon’s work on Facebook.

Daphne Odjig: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:00:18 +0000

Internationally recognized and renowned artist Daphne Odjig was born on September 11, 1919 and raised on the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island (Lake Huron), Ontario Canada. As a child, art was a favourite subject and she developed the habit of sketching with her grandfather and father who were both artistic.

In 1942, Odjig moved to Toronto with her sister Winnie where she worked at the John Inglis Munitions, Planters Peanuts and Dr. Ballards dog food factories. Over the next ten years, Odjig taught herself to paint by trial and error. In 1945, she moved to British Columbia and married Paul Somerville, a Mohawk/Metis Second World War veteran she met in Toronto. In 1948, their son Stanley was born.

Odjig continued her art explorations, experimenting in oils on homemade stretchers and recycled tent canvas. Influenced by Canadian painter Cornelius Krieghoff, she painted naturalistic landscapes. In 1950, Odjig discovered the work of Picasso and began experimenting with Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.

In 1958, Odjig and her family purchased a thirty-acre farm at Columbia Valley, British Columbia with a plan to grow strawberries. Despite her husband’s death in 1960, Odjig planted the crop as planned and continued to farm in the summer, focusing on painting in the winter months. In 1961, Odjig began a period of intense artistic experimentation. She learned by copying works in books borrowed from the library and by visits to the Vancouver Art Gallery to study painting techniques up close. Influenced by the Impressionists, Odjig experimented with light effects, broken brush strokes and Cloisonnism.

In 1967, Odjig had her first public solo exhibition at the Lakehead Art Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The exhibition consisted of seventy-eight drawings, pastels and acrylics. By 1971, Odjig had moved to Winnipeg with her second husband Chester Beavon, where she opened a small craft store and taught at Manitou Art Foundation on Schreiber Island.

In 1973, Odjig co-founded the Professional Indian Artists Inc. (the Indian Group of Seven), a group of professional aboriginal artists who came together to promote their work and change the way the western art world looked at native art. In that same year, she was commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum to create From Mother Earth Flows the River of Life for the Canadian Indian Art’74 exhibition.

“Odjig has a unique Native style blended with a modern graphic approach. Influenced by Northwest Coast art during her time in British Columbia and by the developing Anishnabe style, her paintings focus on the importance of womanhood and sense of family. Central to her work is the circle, which to the Ojibwa signifies completion and perfection and is symbolic of women.”

Odjig has received numerous awards and honours including the first, (and as of November 2009), the only First Nation woman artist to show at the National Gallery of Canada, the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, seven honorary degrees, the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, the Governor General’s Laureate for Visual and Media Arts, and the Expression Award from the National Film Board of Canada.

Odjig currently lives and works in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada. For more information, visit DaphneOdjig.com.

Sources: Preview Gallery Guide, Art History Archive, DaphneOdjig.com

Grandma Moses – Anna Mary Robertson Moses: 1860-1961

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:00:02 +0000

Born on September 7, 1860, Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka Grandma Moses) was one of the most successful and renowned artists in America and possibly the best known American artist in Europe. Born in a farming community in Greenwich, New York, Moses had little formal education and left home at the age of 12 to work as a hired girl on a nearby farm. She worked in this capacity until the age of 27 when she married Thomas Salmon Moses, a worker at the farm .

Anna and Thomas invested in a farm in Virginia where they remained for twenty years. During that time, Moses had ten children (5 died in infancy). The couple returned to New York in 1905 and settled on a farm in Eagle Bridge. Thomas died in 1927 and Anna remained on the farm until 1936 when she retired and went to live with her daughter.

Moses’ earliest works were in embroidery which she began making in the 1930s. It was not until her late 70s, when arthritis prevented her from continuing with her craft, that she took up painting. A self taught artist, her first paintings were copies of prints and postcards. Moses soon began painting her own scenes with subject matter based on her memories of the rural countryside and farm life. In 1938, Moses’ paintings were on display at Thomas’s Drugstore, Hoosick Falls, NY when engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor discovered them and bought them all.

The following year, Moses’ work was included in an exhibition of “contemporary unknown painters” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1940, Moses had her first successful solo show “What a Farmwife Painted” at the Galerie St. Etienne. Media and viewers alike were charmed by Moses “down-home” personality and the simple realism and nostalgia of her paintings. Her ability to capture optimistic scenes of rural activities such as maple sugaring, soap and candle making, haying, etc., were welcomed by a world recovering from WWII and facing the new threat of the Cold War. Soon, other solo shows followed in the US and abroad and Moses developed a large international following. European critics described her work as “lovable,” “fresh,” “charming,” “adorable” and “full of naive and childlike joy.”

Moses was a prolific painter and created more than one thousand paintings in her lifetime. Her works have been reproduced on holiday greeting cards, tiles, fabrics, and in books. In 1949, President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women’s National Press Club Trophy Award for outstanding accomplishment in art. In 1951, Moses appeared on the Edward R. Murrow television show “See It Now”, and in 1952, she published her autobiography “Grandma Moses: My Life’s History”. In 1953, Moses was on the cover of TIME Magazine, and in 1960 on the cover of LIFE Magazine celebrating her 100th birthday. Moses also received honorary doctoral degrees from Russell Sage College in 1949, and from the Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1951.

Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses died on December 13, 1961 at the age of 101. Of her death, her physician, Dr. Clayton E. Shaw, said “she had died of hardening of the arteries, but the best way to describe the cause of death”, he suggested, was to say “she just wore out.”

Sources: New York Times, Orlando Museum of Art, Galerie St. Etienne

Marina Richter: Illustration

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:00:34 +0000

Born in 1962 in Moscow, illustrator and printmaker Marina Richter (Richterova) graduated from the Art and Craft College in Moscow, where she studied miniature and iconography and book culture and illustration. She has lived and worked in Prague since 1983. In 1990, Richter completed studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design (Prague), specialising in illustration and graphic art.

To see more, visit Art Forum.

Sources: Galerie Kraus

Kathleen Lolley: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:00:09 +0000

Born in 1978 in Marshfield, Wisconsin, Kathleen Lolley moved to Kentucky nine months after her birth. She spent her childhood split between Louisville, KY and Pittsburgh, PA. Lolley has a BFA in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts and while there, she experimented with hand-crafted stop motion puppets. This experience introduced her to the world of comics and sequential art. In addition to working on various commercial animations, including Nickelodeon’s Sponge Bob Squarepants and titles for the movie Willard, Lolley has created a handful of short films.

Storytelling still plays a prominent role in her work and Lolley’s work explores themes of nature , fantasy & critters trying to break the spell of day to day heartbreak. She currently resides in Kentucky where she spends her time making crafts, comics and fine art. (see more at Thinkspace Gallery)

See more at KathleenLolley.com.

Images from Escape Into Life

Chelsea Brown: Painting/Drawing

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:00:21 +0000

San Francisco based artist Chelsea Brown is inspired by supernatural themes influenced by myths, legends, spirits, cosmology and rituals. She is amazed by Native American spiritual culture and much of the research that informs her work, begins there. Of this influence, Brown says: “I find their culture fascinating…. Nature is revered as a life giver — the Native Americans recognized their ultimate dependence upon it.”

To see more, visit ChelseaDraws.com.

Sources: 7×7 SF, Brown Paper Bag

T.S. Abe: Drawing

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:00:59 +0000

Born in 1989 in Brixton, London, England and a graduate of Central Saint Martins University of the Arts, T.S. Abe has successfully progressed from early aged doodles, to firmly realized pencil works. Her drawings have graced a multitude of mediums: from album covers, to exhibition walls, and a London bus.

At the young age of 21, Abe has already exhibited at Electric Blue Gallery, commissioned by Leo Burnett Agency, and featured in Dazed & Confused Magazine.

To see more, visit Krop.com/TSAbe, her Blogspot, or her profile on Behance.

Silvia Pelissero: Mixed Media

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:40:44 +0000

Silvia Pelissero (aka Agnes-Cecile), is a young artist from Rome, Italy. Pelissero studied at Liceo Artistico Giorgio De Chirico in Rome and works in a variety of mediums including watercolour, oil, acrylic, varnish, and digital paintings.

To see more visit Pelissero’s portfolio on Deviant Art. There is also a video on YouTube showing the artist in action.

Lillian Bassman: Photography

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:30:01 +0000

Born on June 15, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York, Lillian Bassman is considered to be one of the most important fashion photographers of the 20th century.

Bassman studied at the Textile High School in Manhattan, NY in 1933 and became an assistant painter at the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in 1934. In the 1940s, Bassman was working as a graphic designer when photographer Richard Avedon, a friend of her and her husband (Paul Himmel), encouraged her towards a career in photography.

Bassman’s most well known photos were taken from the late 1940s to the early 1960s and most were published in Harper’s Bazaar. During this time she also worked as an art director for Junior Bazaar and later for Harper’s Bazaar. At Harper’s Bazaar , “Bassman brought a sophisticated, new aesthetic to fashion photography with her elegant, moody, and often abstract images. Her work diverged from classic fashion photography in that she did not rely on beautiful models and clothes as the sole essence of her photographs.”

“Bassman’s experimental and romantic visions revolutionized fashion photography. Vanity Fair magazine singled her out as one of photography’s “grand masters. ‘Full of mystery, sensuality, and expressionistic glamour, Bassman’s dramatic black and white photographs capture secret moments and dream memories. Her work is elegant, graceful and totally original. Bassman’s unique images achieve their effect through darkroom manipulation, specifically by blurring and bleaching areas of the photographs.’”

By the 1970s, Bassman’s interest in “pure form” photography was at odds with the changing fashion industry. She abandoned photography and turned back to painting, closing her studio for the next two decades. She returned to photography in the early 1990s after a friend found a bag of Bassman’s negatives in storage. Bassman, who had always had an interest in the manipulation of photographs, began altering the pictures and bleaching out backgrounds, creating dramatic effects.

At the age of 87, Bassman discovered PhotoShop and currently works daily in her studio “toying and reconfiguring” her photographs. “She claims a proud proficiency with her computer. It is a skill however that does not extend to the use of e-mail or Google. ” “I’m not interested,” she said, “in any of that.” (New York Times)

To see more photos, check out the Lillian Bassman fan page on Facebook.

Sources: Farmani Gallery, New York Times

Danielle Duer: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:30:36 +0000

Painter Danielle Duer works from her studio in Nashville, Tennessee. She describes her narrative pieces as manifestations of a romantic walk inside her own head. Duer sees this world and the people in it as “blissful and beautiful but equally heartbroken and sick.” She wants each piece of art to contain all of these Authentic elements of life. She is interested in human behavior and why we are the way we are, why we act the way we do, and how it often differs from who we are inside. How do we really feel? How do we cover this up? How are we sincere? What is the truth? Aesthetically, her paintings are illusive but they often symbolize her undying urge to expose our vulnerable hearts and the weapons that guard them, all from a feminine perspective.

To see more, visit DanielleDuer.com.

Megan Kimber: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:00:47 +0000

Born and raised in Poughkeepsie, New York, Megan Kimber graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a BFA in Illustration. After living and creating in Orlando, Florida and New York, she then moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she received her MFA in Illustration from The Savannah College of Art and Design. She now resides in Birmingham, Alabama.

Inspired by the color palette of the light at dusk, Kimber depicts psychological portrait studies within environments reminiscent of the Brother’s Grimm Fairy tales. When it comes to her characters, she finds beauty in flaws. Ultimately, her biggest inspiration is nature – animal movements, fossils, colors found in light and shadow, objects worn and atrophied by forces of nature. Costumes, rituals, and anything else symbolic of a specified sacred celebration is what provides her man-made inspiration.

Kimber’s paintings have been exhibited in Birmingham, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Savannah, NY, Orlando, and Providence.

Her illustration work has been published with Lipstick magazine, Yellow Brand Skateboards, an upcoming CD project from Kebbi Williams, and Ancestry Magazine. (bio from Matt Jones Gallery)

To see more of Megan Kimber’s work, visit MeganKimber.com.

Elaine Fried de Kooning: 1918-1989

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:00:37 +0000

Born on March 12, 1918 (or 1920) in Brooklyn, New York, Elaine Marie Catherine Fried de Kooning was a painter, sculptor, draughtswoman, printmaker, writer, and wife of influential artist Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning studied in New York at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, the American Art School, the Academy School, and with Willem de Kooning. She was interested in both figurative and abstract art, acknowledging the influence of her husband and of the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School.

Elaine met Willem de Kooning in 1938 and the couple married in 1943. They had a turbulent marriage, separating in 1956 and reconciling in 1975. Though they benefited from one another’s art and teaching, they also suffered from each other’s infidelities and struggles with alcoholism.

During the 1940s, de Kooning painted portraits of her family, her husband, and many of her literary friends and fellow artists, including the poets Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg and the choreographer Merce Cunningham.

De Kooning had her first solo exhibition at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1952 and exhibited almost annually thereafter throughout the United States, including shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1964.

In 1962, de Kooning was commissioned by the White House to paint the portrait of President John F. Kennedy. The portrait is one of de Kooning’s most well known and celebrated paintings. Following his assassination in 1963, de Kooning stopped painting for a year and took a teaching appointment at the University of California, Davis.

In the 1970s, de Kooning taught at numerous colleges including Yale University, Pratt Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Rice University, and others.

While de Kooning, like the “action” painters of the time, used gestural brushstrokes, most her work was figurative and representational, and rarely pure abstraction. An avid traveler, “she was exposed to and inspired by a wide variety of art work that helped make her one of the more diverse artists from the Abstract Expressionist movement; she experimented with sculpture, etchings and subject matter inspired by cave drawings, all in addition to her wealth of painting, which included everything from watercolors and still lifes to abstractions and formal portraits.”

De Kooning’s works are in the collections of numerous major American museums, including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Elaine de Kooning died of lung cancer on February 1, 1989. Willem de Kooning, suffering from dementia at the time, was never told of his wife’s death.

Sources: Crown Point Press, The Art Story

Annie Owens: Illustration

Wendy Campbell — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:00:17 +0000

Annie Owens is a native of California’s Bay Area and is currently living in Albany as the co-founder of Hi-Fructose magazine. She’s shown in various gallery group exhibits over the last three years with her first solo show last May. Her work is Primarily rendered in watercolors and ink on paper. Her figurative paintings depict sullen faced girls who confront viewers with sometimes malicious stares, sometimes with a baleful gaze. The figures represent qualities within familial relationships and the varying complicated degrees of affection, malice, distrust, pain and love which exist within them. (bio from Rivet)

To see more of Owens’ work, visit OuchClub.com.

Ali Smith: Abstract Painting

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:17:23 +0000

Born in 1976, Long Beach, California based painter Ali Smith has a B.S in Studio Art from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York and an MFA from California State University.

“Smith uses the canvas as an open space of exploration; an empty landscape that serves as the starting point for investigation into abstract terrains. The recurring visual trope of Rococo-like excess and abundance performs a celebratory re-assertion of the endless possibilities available to the painter. Smith weaves together fleeting thoughts, moments of time, the fine lines between fact and fiction and subjective desires within her canvases, which in turn present the hopeful attitude of the artist, in the face of the realities of life and experience.”

Smith has had solo exhibitions in New York, Houston and Los Angeles. She has been included in numerous group shows, including the Laguna Art Museum (CA), Irvine Fine Arts Center (CA), as well as shows in Boston, Tokyo and Basel. Her work is included in the collections of the Laguna Art Museum (CA), Frederick R. Weisman Foundation (CA), Progressive (OH) and the Chaney Family Collection (TX).

Ali Smith is represented by Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. For more information, visit AliSmith.org.