About Harry Holland:

Harry Holland is widely regarded as one of Britain’s best craftsmen, producing technically brilliant and very beautiful paintings. His style is distinctive and immediately recognizable, something which every artist seeks. The paintings are suggestive in the sense that they imply situations, events, or relationships that are not directly expressed; this imbues them with an engaging sense of mystery. A master of painting, Holland works with uncompromising commitment and sincerity to produce art that is intense and rewarding.

Holland was born in Glasgow in 1941. He trained at St. Martin’s School of Art from 1965-69. Since the 1970s this extraordinary classical artist has had over 30 solo exhibitions and figured in countless group exhibitions worldwide. Not surprisingly, his work has developed a substantial international following amongst collectors and has found its way into numerous important public collections world-wide including the Tate Gallery, British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, National Museum of Wales, National Portrait Gallery Canada, Welsh Arts Council, European Parliament Collection, Belgian National Collection and the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge.

Celebrities and pop culture heavily impacts each and every one of us, whether we realize it or not. We are constantly being marketed to as shoppers on the hunt for the next great thing. Iconic figures like Elvis Presley and Madonna, though entertaining, could simply be seen as figurative representations of albums and other goods an audience would pay for. Essentially, as consumers, we might as well be seeing a bunch of barcodes. Innovative artist Scott Blake realizes this mass consumer culture in his series of works known as Barcode Art that seem to expose the business end of celebrities and their marketability.

Each large-scale picture incorporates thousands of barcodes of purchasable items specific to each subject to make up their personal portrait. For movie stars like Bruce Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blake uses barcodes from each of their movies to construct their visual representation. For influential pop artist Andy Warhol, the barcodes of different Campbell’s soup cans are used, giving a nod to the iconic artist’s Campbell’s Soup Cans series.

No matter who the subject is or what products are used to create their visage, each piece is executed diligently. There is clearly a keen thought process that goes into the planning for every work. Rather than uniformly constructing the portraits in a grid-like form, Blake presents each image with a unique design. While the construction of the physical image is highly impressive on its own, there is another element to the artist’s series of works that take it to another level. All of Blake’s barcode artworks are scannable. This interactive component to the work incorporates visual aids. For Marilyn Monroe, depending on the barcode that’s scanned, an accompany clip from the movie will play on a screen beside the work. Check out the video, below, to see some of these works in action.

We were also lucky enough to get in contact with Scott who was kind enough to answer a few questions. Be sure to read that brief interview at the bottom of this post.

Madonna

Oprah Winfrey

Andy Warhol

Ozzy Osbourne

Mao Zedong

Martha Stewart

Elvis Presley

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee (close up)

Arnold Schwarzenegger

via: My Modern Met

Born and raised in northern China,  Victor Wang is currently a professor of fine arts at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Missouri.  Wang has a BFA (oil painting) from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in China and an MFA from Fontbonne University where he works.

Of his painting, Wang says, “My path through life has been adventurous, exciting, and dream-like. My experience of settling into America in search of better opportunities has been both challenging and inspiring. I use the human face as a vehicle to paint human experiences – worry and wonder, sadness and pleasure – which reflect the emotional stage directly tied to my immigration experiences.

China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage.  My incorporation of collages of figures from China’s Tang Dynasty represents my Chinese heritage and is a constant reminder of where I came from. The texture and earthiness on the canvas’s surface are inspired by the texture of the soil on the farm where I worked in China.”

To see more of Wang’s work, visit VictorWang.net.

via: Daily Art Fixx

When I saw these incredible illustrations by freelance designer David Fuhrer, I was immediately reminded of the mnemonic my teacher taught us in school: My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. That learning technique helped me to remember the order of the planets in terms of distance from the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. That was when Pluto was still considered a full planet!

Fuhrer’s project, The Cosmos, is a set of infographics that depict the planets in our solar system with accurate scale and surface detail for an upcoming documentary and German book. The renderings of these digital planets have such incredible depth that it was hard to believe they were illustrations! The bio on Fuhrer’s website says it best, stating that, “his imagination in unity with his broad library of skills has allowed him to create some of the most out-of-this-world images… [His] work is a rare treat for the eyes and mind as the depth of his work is as mesmerizing as the feel that his pieces exude.”

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune

The Moon

Inner Solar System

Outer Solar System

SIZES

David Fuhrer’s website

via: Best Bookmarks

Bio

Scott Harrison Greenwalt was born in St. Louis, Missouri 1974.
Currently operating in Oakland, California.

Statement

My paintings depict a glimpse into another dimension where familiar forms take on alien qualities. I’m interested in the unseen moments of this transmutation: the chemical reaction that instantly changes the make-up of a substance, or the gradual transformation of a landscape that moves further and further into chaos: growth and decay, ebbing and flowing in an unending cycle of continual renewal and demise. Landscapes are swarmed by electro-chemical phenomenon and undulating waves of gelatinous fluid. In portraiture, grotesque beings are formed through rapid molecular rearrangement – a mutation of both uncertain origin and destiny. My paintings are really about capturing a moment, or a composite of several moments, wherein the subject undergoes a massive physical change.

Adrian Ghenie‘s paintings play with texture by distorting the works’ figures as an allegory for the abuses of power. By  drawing on figures from history – such as Marcel Duchamp and Holocaust doctor Dr Josef Mengele – Ghenie scrapes and washes away their features to explore the brutality at the core of human nature.

via: Beautiful/Decay

Using a process that could be the new definition of meticulous, Korean sculptor Seung Mo Park creates giant ephemeral portraits by cutting layer after layer of wire mesh. Each work begins with a photograph which is superimposed over layers of wire with a projector, then using a subtractive technique Park slowly snips away areas of mesh. Each piece is several inches thick as each plane that forms the final image is spaced a few finger widths apart, giving the portraits a certain depth and dimensionality that’s hard to convey in a photograph, but this video on YouTube shows it pretty well. Park just exhibited this month at Blank Space Gallery in New York as part of his latest series Maya (meaning “illusion” in Sanskrit). You can see much more at West Collects. (art news, west collects, lavinia tribiani)

via: Colossal

Michael Byers is an Illustrator living in beautiful Canada. Michael has been drawing all of his life. His grandmother would agree. Every since he was a small boy, Michael doodled all over every note pad he could find lying around his Grandmother’s house. Growing up in beautiful southern Ontario in a smaller city has had a great influence on his work.

Just another example of someone interacting with our ecosystem, submitting their work, and us loving it.  Sebastien’s need for creative living was so clear in his short, yet poignant message to us, and within seconds we were on his website, consuming his creations.  His art shows the versatility of an illustrator who has welcomed a computer into his mainframe.  He’s definitely found his voice artistically, and is EXACTLY why this Arts Media & Advocacy project we call IPaintMyMind exists.

Sebastien is soon to graduate from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and we look forward to witnessing his development. We hope Sebastien won’t be upset with us, but we love what he wrote us so much, we’re sharing it!

“Where most illustrations are either drawn or painted, I try to both draw and paint each piece. I absolutely love color, I’m drawn to subjects that show weight or tension, and I’m constantly searching for unique textures to shoot and integrate into my work. I could draw and paint a face a day for the rest of my life and be happy, but enjoy equally the process of communicating a specific message through illustration.” - Sebastien Rossouw, in an email submission to IPMM

Check out this visit into his studio by Olaolu Jegede on Vimeo:

Take a trip down Sebastien’s rabbit hole, right HERE.

via: IPaintMyMind