Rad Art

I stumbled across this tumblr account via buzzfeed, a great page featuring classical paintings with modern hip hop. I love this juxtaposition and how these words bring a new element to old paintings at flyartproductions. They really give the subjects a voice and add some humour and fun to the great masters. My tumblr, beforesunrisebeforethebirds has irregular posts,but I do love following others like these great girls at flyart.

They also recently started creating tshirts with these images. I love "Get Lucky" combined with an Edward Hopper painting, 'Summer Evening'... any ideas for Christmas presents anyone?

Shirts and more can be found at http://www.rad.co/us/brands/fly-art.html

This inspired me on my twitter feed @seewavesbreak, combining modern artists with my favourite quotes. It's always good to spread the word on artists you love!

Picasso at Work

Picasso is a legendary figure in the art world. His work still groundbreaking and inspiring. This video is a stop motion film of him painting, works which he later destroyed. This is a tantalising glimpse into his breathtaking art in motion. Since the work was destroyed this is a perfect moment in time, suspended through the medium of film where we can view the genius of Picasso and watch him in action.

watch full video

Because these paintings were destroyed upon completion the full Mystery of Picasso was declared a national treasure by the French government. 

see original article

Artists That Inspire: Samantha French

With temperatures rising I am starting to feel the itch to head to the sea.. Well any sort of pool of water will do. It's that time of year to go swimming, sailing, kayaking, and other water activities. My favourite memories are of that first plunge after a hard days work in my grandparent's pond. The cool murky water enveloping me, and finding silent peaceful state. I find that feeling of peace and contentment floating in water, as long as someone isn't cannonballing nearby! The painter Samantha French recreates those feeling for me in her painting of swimmers underwater. She says,

"My current body of work is focused on swimmers underwater and above. Using vague yet consuming memories from my childhood summers spent immersed in the tepid lakes of northern Minnesota, I attempt to recreate the quiet tranquillity of water and nature; of days spent sinking and floating, still and peaceful.  These paintings are a link to my home and continual search for the feeling of the sun on my face and warm summer days at the lake.  They are my escape, a subtle reprieve from the day-to-day.  At the same time, I am drawn to an idealistic time before my own, where swim caps and wool swimsuits were commonplace. This combination of memory, observation and photography (old and new) has allowed me to preserve the transitory qualities of water and remembrance."

                                             Samantha French in her Brooklyn Studio

"Surface Break"

"Breathing at the surface I"

"Twist; let go"

"Twilight"

I find these pieces very peaceful, like the gentle rocking motion you get when you float on the surface of the ocean. These works and others can be found on Samantha French's site here.

Artists that Inspire: Sally Benedict

Sally Benedict is an artist who has recently caught my eye, her style is abstract but she has a mesmerising and calming quality to her work that makes me want to look at it again and again. On her website, www.sallybenedict.com, she says that she

 "...grew up in Atlanta, frequently traveling and attending art openings, exhibits, and design shows, seeking inspiration from the work of both past and contemporary artists. She completed her education at The College of Charleston in 2007. Sally has traveled extensively to South America and Europe where she honed her eye and trademark ability to create visual texture with a rich, adventurous color palette and expressive linear techniques."

from http://www.sallybenedict.com/press/ photograph by Ben Williams

from her interview above, "she's most influenced by innovative females like Georgia O'Keeffe and Sonia Delaunay, the french painter who applied her geometric vision to everything from textiles to photography. Benedict often incorporates the kaleidoscopic colors of the Lowcountry and recently began dabbling in portraiture..." 

I love the completative, soothing nature of her pieces that still manage to be lively and feminine; sounds like she puts a lot of herself in her art judging from her interviews. These are all lovely pieces and I would love to be able to have one for my home.

Ethereal

Nugget 1

both painting above from http://stylecarrot.com/2012/03/19/artmonday-sally-king-benedict-abstact-paintings/ and are sold.

Spring Bazaar

Mexican Tile

Two Weeks Off

Cords

 -this last one is my favourite...

These last four are from her current portfolio, find at http://www.sallybenedict.com/work/new/

Her work reminds me of the work of the early expressionist artists like Kandinsky's Black Arc, and inspires in me the same dreamy affect of Chagall, though without the flying animals. Her art seems to me like an extension of what the Expressionists found in Cubism, a technique to "explore the emotional facets of the subconscious, primitive energy by reorganizing the pictures surface"1.

" Mountains and Sea" Helen Frankenthaler, 1952

Sally's art reminds me in particular of Helen Frankenthaler's work as she combined free intermingling patterns where the pigment and the illusion of depth. She along with Albers and Morris Louis were part of the Late Abstract Expressionism in the 50s and 60s creating art that people were to live with rather than for the gallery. You look at both Sally's and Helen's work and are overwhelmed by the artist's feelings imbedded in the work, it may not necessarily be a representational work but it still imparts the experience that the artist intended.

 As for me it makes me want to pick up my brush again and paint some abstract reflections on the coming warm weather, maybe I'll head off to the park with my easel and paint 'en plein air' like Monet taught.

1. Art: A history of Changing Style by Sara Cornell p.396

Spring Green- Inspiration

 

The weather has finally turned for the better and it feels like Spring is finally here. Here are some spring greens to brighten your day. I hope it's nice where you are! 

1.photography by david christensen 2. Raoul Dufy via alovelybeing  3. painting by Tatiana Musi 4. Prue Ruscoe photography via desiretoinspire 5. via Mark D. Sikes  6. Miranda Brooks and Mastien Halard's home via Vogue.com

view more of my inspiration board at pinterest

Thoughtful Billboards

This is from the work of the artist and poet Robert Montgomery, he says he works in a  "POETIC AND MELANCHOLIC POST-SITUATIONIST TRADITION"  leaving his art on what would otherwise be an overlooked part of the city. In the everyday world we are assaulted by images. Due to mass media there is no getting away from the image as it determines our reality and how we live and behave. The image becomes more real than reality. There is only surface without depth. As Berger stated, 

" We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact... we accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate.. we are theoretically the active agent- we can look away, turn down the sound, make some coffee. Yet despite this, one has the impression that publicity images are continually passing us, like express trains on their way to some distant terminus. We are static; they are dynamic." 

Yet Robert Montgomery, through his use of billboards, bus stops, challenges our perception of the everyday. Taking something that would normally be used for publicity images and instead uses them to challenge and interact with the passerby. The text forcing us to stop, read, interpret. In a way that an image no longer does, as we skim over the many images we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Added to that his choice of words and their direct correlation to an event, (image 2, Oscar Night) challenges us to contemplate his words as we go about our daily lives, waiting for the bus. So every so often, stop, and really look.

view more of his work at http://www.robertmontgomery.org/robertmontgomery.org/ROBERT_MONTGOMERY.html

quote: Ways of Seeing, by John Berger