Daily Art Fixx

visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!

Craww: Illustration/Painting

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Self taught artist and habitual doodler, Craww lives and works in Sheffield, UK. Drawing inspiration from daydreams, music, comics, nature, gin and an overactive imagination, Craww’s work is a stream of consciousness ramble through the woods, populated with skulls, crows and melancholic girls with big hands.”

Craww likes ambiguity and his work explores his fascination with things that aren’t quite what they seem. Combining Photoshop with pencil, paint, spilled ink and whatever else is at hand, he aims to bring his stream of consciousness “droodlings” to life with a mix of elegance, balance and disciplined chaos.

To explore more, visit Craww.com.

Simon Birch: Painting

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Born in the UK in 1969, Simon Birch began painting at a very early age with no formal training until his recent Masters in Fine Arts with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.  He has been a resident in Hong Kong since 1997.

“Birch is interested in universal ideas of transition, the ambiguous moment between an initiation and a conclusion, the unobtainable now and the future, inevitably crashing towards us. For Birch these ideas translate easily from oil paint, to film, to installations, which engage with myth, history, circus and science fiction, connection and disconnect. He chooses to explore these themes in an enveloping environment of theater and spectacle, where the process of viewing becomes experiential: overwhelming and complex, yet as spectacle and adventure, also approachable.”

The images below are from Birch’s 2011 “Laughing With a Mouth Full of Blood” shown at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences, and presented by Birch’s new gallery, Future Industries, which was recently founded in Hong Kong to pioneer new ways of representing and exhibiting artists outside the ‘white cube’ project room.   Birch’s exhibition challenged assumptions about medical science as aftorm of impartial or pure opticality, which reduces the body to a pathological object of study. His twisting subjects, whose faces look down, as in‘Gilotina,’ or flinch from the viewer, as in ‘Scapa Flow,’ suggest that thebody will always elude technologies that seek to separate flesh from soul andregulate, rationalize and control its humanity.”

To learn more about Simon Birch, check out his profile on FutureIndustries.com, MonkeyModified.Blogspot.com, and  his profile on Behance.

Ben Slow: Street / Portrait Art

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London, UK artist Ben Slow “paints what he sees – in the urban environment, in the media and in the people of the city that he loves.”  Working from his London studio, Slow finds an exciting dynamic in the contradictory relationship between the glamorous pop images and the raw, unrefined urban context in which such icons are celebrated.  “The point of my work is to reduce the silhouette to its most elegant and minimal, while simultaneously embellishing its energy, depth and texture.  The process is as symbolic as it is aesthetic.”

“I have never stopped expanding my methods and technique, often using found materials as my canvas and defining with whatever materials I come across. Anything can be used for some sort of mark making if you have the imagination, and the effects of such improvisation are what makes my work so distinctive.  Texture is a vital part of my work and the expressive portraits are richly detailed through a deceptively intricate process of layering and colouring.  This is particularly noticeable in the large scale works such as those at the Royal Albert Hall or in the various street pieces.  The larger the piece, the more room there is for his expressive techniques to run free.”

To see more, visit SlowBen.com or check out Ben’s photostream on Flickr.

Carne Griffiths: Mixed Media

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Carne Griffiths’ artwork is born from a love of drawing and the journey of creating an image on the page. Working primarily with calligraphy ink, graphite and liquids, such as tea brandy, vodka and whiskey, he draws and then manipulates the drawn line. After graduating from Maidstone College of Art in Kent, UK, Carne served an apprenticeship and worked as a gold wire embroidery designer for 12 years, hence floral pattern, repetition and flow play a large part in his work.

Carne’s images explore both human and floral forms, figuratively and in an abstract sense. He is fascinated by the flow of line and the ‘invisible lines’ that connect us to the natural world. These may be considered lines of energy or spiritual connections between ourselves and our surroundings and his work is often an emotional response to images and situations encountered in daily life. These daily images are recorded in a dream like sense onto the page where physical boundaries are no longer important. Carne’s work takes us on a journey of escapism, often focusing on scenes of awe and wonderment, they offer a sense of abandonment to the artist and to the viewer an invitation to share and explore this inner realm. (bio from artist website)

To see more, visit CarneGriffiths.com or check out his profile on Behance.

Chloe Early: Feathers and Wax @ Joshua Liner Gallery

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 Born in 1980 in London, England, Chloe Early grew up in Cork, Ireland and graduated from National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Early’s latest exhibition Feathers and Wax is currently on at Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City.

“Working in oils on linen and aluminum panel, Chloe Early has developed a unique style that is simultaneously lush and raw. The romantic and the gritty meet in her paintings, which tease out a distinctively poetic worldview through the juxtaposition of extremes. At their core is a sensitivity to lyrical feelings and themes—love, beauty, innocence, softness—which collide with more worldly symbols of aggression and degradation, such as bullets, bombs, urban refuse, and ruins.

Yet Early avoids any kind of resolution, or even overt narrative. Rather, she simply allows these opposing elements to float in space and intermix, creating a charged atmosphere that suspends a definitive reading or conclusion. The effect, though disorienting, suggests the achievement of psychological or spiritual wholeness, however momentary.

As the exhibition title, Feathers and Wax, suggests, the concept of suspension is noble but also naïve and ill fated. Alluding to the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus, these materials allowed young Icarus to soar to idealistic heights and flout the sensible cautions of his father. The consequences were tragic. This contrast of dream and reality is given a contemporary retelling in Early’s painting Frontier Firecrackers, where a pair of youths are pictured plummeting through a garland of grapes and roses into a new environment of junkyard tires and cruise missiles.

With this series, Early explores her fascination with flight through depictions of the body in motion. In her representations of gravity, and the brief moments when it is suspended, her figures are caught at the tipping point between soaring and falling. These atmospheric “scenes” are set against high-contrast washes of saturated color. Early creates her large-scale painterly montages by incorporating imagery mostly from her own source photography and personal travel photos. Throughout, symmetry is created and destroyed as the paintings shift between the abstract and the representational, Eden and Armageddon.” (from Joshua Liner Gallery)

To see more works from Feathers and Wax, visit Joshua Liner Gallery.  To see more earlier works, check out ChloeEarly.com or her blog ChloeEarlyPaintsPictures.wordpress.com.

Danny O’Connor: Mixed Media 2011

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When-You-Least-Expect-it-Danny-OConnorThe latest work from Liverpool, UK based mixed media artist Danny O’Connor (aka DOC).  O’Connor graduated from Liverpool’s John Moores Art School where he studied graphic arts. Concentrating mainly on figurative and portrait subject matter,  his influences include comic books, graffiti, illustration, and character design.  With a strong graphic element visible in his work, O’Connor uses a wide range of media including acrylics, spray paint, ink, paint markers,  and household gloss and emulsions.

To see more, visit his Flickr photo stream or his online store on BigCartel.

Nom Kinnear-King: Painting 2011

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The latest work from UK artist Nom Kinnear-King. “From her shed in the Norfolk countryside Kinnear-King creates in oils and pencil. Portraits of girls roam from town to town in a patchwork old fashioned never world, where accordions and clarinets trail their steps, their joyful and curious behaviour shadowed by sweet melancholy. Nom is represented by London Miles, Fine Grime and Just Another Agency.”

To see more, visit NomKinnearKing.com.

Si Scott: Drawing/Illustration

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Si Scott is a full time artist and designer based in the UK.  A unique style that is a blend of hand crafted and hand drawn artwork that has an almost obsessive attention to detail.  Si exhibits regularly and lectures around the world including Tokyo, Sydney, Toronto, Norway, and New York.  He is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Huddersfield Graphic Design & Illustration program.

To see more, visit SiScottStudio.com.

Joseph Loughborough: Mixed Media

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Joseph Loughborough spent his formative years playing in the derelict boatyards and creeks of Portsmouth, UK. These vivid early memories are evident in his figurative work, where the sensual curve of human ribs might be mistaken for the carcass of an old boat sinking into the mud, its skeletal hull protruding thorough the weeds.

Honesty, expressionism and possibly exorcism can be read from his impulsive and intuitive rapid-fire mark making, which strive to grasp a comprehension of our human condition. Questions are frequently asked of the viewer about how we interpret our oft-untold fears and desires.

A profound interest in the life and works of Egon Schiele, Frank Auerbach, Käthe Kollwitz and Alberto Giacometti gives a further insight into his aesthetic.

Alongside his involvement as artistic director of a theatre production company in London, Joseph works from his studio in Paris where he is currently preparing for his first solo show in early 2012. (bio from Futuretense.net)

To see more, visit JosephLoughborough.co.uk. For non-flash users, check out his photostream on Flickr.

PHLEGM: Street Art

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The latest (2011) from Sheffield, UK based artist PHLEGM. Born in North Wales Phlegm is well known for his self-published comics and street art. Much of the large scale street works originate from his comics.

Check out more of  Phlegm’s work at PhlegmComics.com and on Flickr.