Inspirations

Antonio Lopez Garcia and Jan Vermeer. Separated by 3 centuries. Both have a great sense of beauty in stillness. Their work endures the passage of time.

Corporate Story { I am working on it}

What started out as a little mask turned into a story.

Originally these illustrations were made for an article about economy, but I feel that now this project has gradually evolved into something more abstract. I have always noticed how people are like animals. This becomes especially evident if you watch discovery channel right after you come home from work. The way people walk, their posture, their body language and their facial expressions when nobody is looking are good indicators of who they are.  In a Darwinist environment such as a big corporation these traits manifest themselves fully.
In other words this is a tale about the carnivorous corporate elite.

Uglow

Uglows' work is incredibly appealing. I would call it "Calculated Beauty".

The Dilemma

Here is the dilemma. The image above is very powerful, very visceral, very substantial in its representational honesty. I love the technique. But what does the artist bring into the world with an image like that? Is this a speculation on the physical mortality of the body? Is it a message? What is the context of this image? While I like this drawing enough to put it up on my blog there is something inside of me that protests to this literal representation of decay. Art making is constructive by nature, it is the process of creating order out of chaos. If the message that art brings is destructive isn't it going against itself? Is the "shock" value really that valuable? Are people drawn to shocking art like they are drawn to a car accident? Is there something else there except for the need to satisfy ones visual thirst for blood? Are shocking artworks more credible?

Beautiful Animation

Black and White.
This animator is really fascinated with falling drapery. His sense of form, value and composition are Fine-Art-like.
Andrey Sovitsky is his name. I have seen his other works, they are very weird, beautiful weird.

Lucien Freud

part 1

part 2

part 3

Lucian Freud. 

If only I had the money to quit my job and get a studio.

A Philosophical Animation about life, art and the forces that prevent art from getting life

"Thou shall not vanish in the unstoppable beak of fate"

The neccessity of Drawing {James Jean}

Here is an artist that reminds me of how wonderfully natural the drawing process is. Basically it's like thinking out loud. Just witnessing something and deciding to take out the pencil. Getting lost in the folds of a blanket, tangled in a web of hair, deeply moved by the curvature of an elbow, surprised by a protruding nose,  the massive neck, delicate fingers.All the wonderful things.
Keep it going James.

Antonio Garcia Lopez, Finally

Like most good things this one took a long while to discover. This is the antidote to everything that's, pretentious, insincere, trendy, superficial, flat. Over the past 60 or so years, so much has been done to visual art to turn it into a repulsive zombie, that's artificially kept alive by elaborate artist statements, concepts, and long philosophical excuses. The avant-garde artists at the turn of the 20th century wanted to destroy Classical Art, but you didn't have to take their words so literally.

Garcia's work is a testament to the fact that the crazed, chemically imbalanced hangover that has shaken post modern art may be slowly fading away. And we discover art back where it always has been, - at the heart of the beautiful and simple nuances of the surrounding world, observed and conveyed with patience and love.

I stumbled upon Garcia's work by accident. I really wish there would be more of his paintings/drawings/sculptures available online. It's so refreshing to see work that is not ideological, or cynical, that's not a social criticism, or an exposure of the failing human society, a statement of the troubled and disturbing inner world, a riddle that is perplexing even to the artist, an existential suicide, a boring, synthetic clone, a soiled canvas, an excuse for not being able to paint. Enough!