Tag: Paintings
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Phantasmic Figures Grapple with Their Doubles in Xie Lei's Dreamy Oil Paintings
Double can mean many things. It may imply a duplicate, symmetry, a reflection, a twin, a splitting, or even a shadow self. There is an inherent duality that forms around two parts, which may or may not be in concert with one another. Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank was the first to describe the concept in read more
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Wildfires and War Rage in Shawn Huckins' Theatrical Paintings
In Slow Burn, Shawn Huckins puts the cognitive dissonance that defines our current era in stark relief. The New Hampshire-based painter has long challenged American mythology and collective aggrandizing by reinterpreting canonical artworks and visual languages. His series have commented on the U.S.’s proclivity for erasing history and the ways our garments convey social status read more
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Water Samples from Around the World Melt into Dima Rebus' Dreamy Paintings
The act of painting is often seen as a solitary pursuit; we picture the artist alone in a studio, working through compositional puzzles and experimenting with materials of their own choosing. For Dima Rebus, the process is collaborative, although he may or may not know the other participants. In his large-scale works, the London-based artist read more
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SHOHEI Ochiai Flattens consumer products into Surrealistic Childlike paintings – Hi-Fructose Magazine
There’s a dreamlike quality to Ochiai’s paintings too, as if memories of the game you coveted or the McDonald’s meal you ate have returned in a surreal way, where plastic products look as if they’re melting and French fries look as if they are about to float up from a squished, red container. “I paint read more
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Life & Death: The Skull Flower Paintings of Dark Artist Chet Zar – Hi-Fructose Magazine
It wasn’t simply a matter of the paintings selling, the audience was interacting with the Skullflower series too. For example, Zar didn’t set out to paint flowers and skulls as a means of discussing life and death, but his audience picked up on the subtext quickly. Life & Death became the title of Zar’s 2024 read more
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Birds Flock Amid Vibrant Blooms in Vasilisa Romanenko's Acrylic Paintings
May is an incredibly busy time for migrating birds, as millions flock from their southerly wintertime feeding grounds back to northern climes, where they’ll nest and breed. Chances are, if you look and listen in your back garden or nearby nature preserves, a wide variety of unusual birds may be noticeable around this time as read more
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Radiohead Spectacle in Brooklyn Teems with World-Building Paintings, Sculpture, and Film
Even after the recent addition of a Wegmans and Wells Fargo gave the entrance the sanitized shine of a suburban shopping center, it would be hard to overstate the strangeness and surreality of the inner parts of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The post-industrial buildings at eye-popping scale hiss and wheeze, and everything in the expansive read more
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Jake Messing's Hyperrealistic Paintings Celebrate the Abundance of Nature
“The world hums with beauty and danger, harmony and discord,” says Jake Messing. “We walk through these shifting currents every day. For as long as I can remember, I have turned toward the natural world—studying its patterns, its relationships, its quiet lessons.” In highly detailed, hyperrealistic paintings, the Northern California-based artist explores nature as a read more
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In Monica Rohan's Paintings, Tablecloths and Chairs Uncannily Perch in Remote Landscapes
Home might be a mutable concept, but some objects retain the aura of belonging and comfort even outside the walls we reside in. For Monica Rohan, those items are patterned fabrics and bentwood dining chairs, which venture outdoors in her vibrant oil paintings. The Brisbane-based artist has long depicted the supple folds and bright motifs read more
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Brushstrokes Transform into Beaded Topographies in Liza Lou's Mixed-Media Paintings
One of the many reasons artists like Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, and other mid-20th-century pioneers of painterly abstraction were so innovative for their time is the use of the deliberate yet loose brushstroke. Pollock intuitively dribbled and splattered paint on surfaces spread across the floor of his studio, and Kline created read more
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Cinga Samson Conjures Mystery and the Sublime in Large-Scale Oil Paintings
Amid groves of trees, meadows, and aging infrastructure, Cinga Samson’s dreamlike tableaux are bathed in eerie light, as if spotlit or illuminated by the moon. The South African artist is known for his use of deep, dark pigments such as carbon black and Prussian blue, complemented by the occasional teal or purple and pops of read more
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Child’s Play: The Paintings of Kayla Mahaffey – Hi-Fructose Magazine
On a very basic level, Mahaffey’s style is an answer to the question, what kind of art should she make? As a child, she wanted to be an illustrator. Children’s book art has been a big inspiration. She was—and still is—a fan of cartoons and comic books. Dr. Seuss books, vintage Disney, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, read more
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Anoushka Mirchandani Conjures Ancient Mythological Nature Spirits in Vibrant Oil Paintings
Throughout Southeast Asia, nymph-like, shape-shifting deities associated with clouds and water known as apsaras are commonly depicted in sculptures and other artworks dating back millennia. For San Francisco-based artist Anoushka Mirchandani, who was born in India, these mythological beings are the spirits, so to speak, of vibrant oil paintings. Tapping into family memories and her read more
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Symbiotic Communion Flourishes in Laura Berger's Expansive Paintings
Chicago-based artist Laura Berger continues her explorations of communion in a suite of staggering paintings that place her signature minimal figures in intimate fellowship with one another and the earth. Spanning six feet wide, the monumental works layer limbs and landscapes, as nude bodies merge with waves, flowers, and sun-strewn clouds. Berger frequently gestures toward read more
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Very Strange Days: The Paintings of Jenny Morgan – Hi-Fructose Magazine
The root of Morgan’s work starts with the photo shoots that she conducts with her models. This is where the intense bond is formed between artist and subject, and that initial feeling of tension and exposure in her portraits is one that originates from this process. “Asking these people to be vulnerable with me and read more
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Weightless: The Paintings of Henrik Uldalen – Hi-Fructose Magazine
“It takes a lot of directing to get the photo right,” says Uldalen. He works mainly with people he knows personally simply because it tends to be easier to rope friends into modeling sessions. Uldalen doesn’t go into the photo shoots with a solid idea of what he wants. He spends a lot of time read more
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Stephen Morrison's Trompe-L'œil 'Dog World' Paintings Are Fetching
Any dog owner can appreciate the kind of unfettered, often visceral reactions canines have to everything from their favorite treats to a scurrying squirrel to another dog passing by the window. Their lack of inhibition and legendary fidelity bring comfort, routine, and goofiness to our daily lives despite their total unawareness of their effects on read more
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Uncanny Valley: The Oil Paintings of the Late Eyvind Earle Still Have A Resounding Influence on Artists & Viewers Today – Hi-Fructose Magazine
By 1951, when Earle was hired as a background painter at Disney, he was well known among the studio artists for his greeting cards. He rose quickly, soon contributing designs for Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, then earning an Academy Award for an animated short. When he was given the reins to Sleeping read more
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Close Encounters: The Paintings of David Rice – Hi-Fructose Magazine
The Pacific Northwest is perhaps the wildest, most breathtaking region in the continental United States. With its combination of mountain ranges, conifer forests, lakes, rivers, and ancient sequoias looming over the California coast, the geography and texture of Wyoming, Montana, California, and Oregon return us to North America’s primordial past. It reminds us of when read more
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Prudence Flint’s Paintings Capture Moments of repose that are ripe for interruption – Hi-Fructose Magazine
CS: Do you ever paint from a model? PF: Yes and no. Having a model in my studio is intense and demanding, so when I’m working on my large paintings, I prefer to be alone. I have to sit with myself and manage the internal voices, listen to them, become impartial. I have to weather read more
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