Category: Surrealism

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Martin Wittfooth

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Martin Wittfooth was born in Toronto, Canada in 1981 and currently splits his time between two studios in Savannah, Georgia, and Brockville, Ontario, Canada.Wittfooth earned his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City.He composes surreal images of animals, plants, flowers, and landscapes in a way which references the tradition of painters past but is at the same time relevant, unique, and personal.Wittfooth’s paintings, drawings, installations and sculptural works use allegory and symbolism to explore themes of the intersection and clash of industry and nature, and the human influence on the environment.Many of his works explore the theme of shamanism – rituals and practices as old as our species – through which we have attempted to dialogue with nature: the nature outside of ourselves and the nature within.His creative language uses the combination of allegory and symbolism to convey visual narratives.“I hope with my art to bridge the gap somewhat between the subconscious and the conscious – the “visionary” with the “baseline” states of mind,” Wittfooth shares.“The mainstream is what is most in need of a change of perspective right now, so I’d like for my art to be able to dialogue with it.”More of Martin Wittfooth’s surreal paintings can be found at https://www.martinwittfooth.com/.

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Tirzah Garwood

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Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951) was a multi-talented artist and designer whose life was tragically cut short when she died of breast cancer aged only 42.

Eileen Lucy “Tirzah” Garwood was a British wood-engraver, painter, paper marbler, author, and a member of the Great Bardfield Artists.

According to Brighton & Hove Museums, Garwood “is one of the most original and distinctive figures of twentieth century British art

Her brilliance as a wood engraver and maker of marbled papers was acknowledged in her lifetime, but her early death meant that few were able to enjoy her captivating, collaged house ‘portraits’ and enigmatic oil paintings.

She prompts us to see the amusing, absurd and uncanny in the detail of everyday life.Garwood’s engravings were imaginatively conceived and precisely executed. They abounded in wry observations and witty juxtapositions.More of Tirzah Garwood’s marvelous wood cuts can be found at https://artuk.org/discover/stories/tirzah-garwood-unveiling-a-forgotten-visionary/

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — David Stoupakis

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David Stoupakis is an American artist known for his captivating and introspective artworks that blend elements of surrealism, dark fantasy, and emotional narrative.Stoupakis’ artistic journey began with formal training at the Art institute of Boston, where he honed his skills in traditional techniques while developing a distinctive style characterized by haunting imagery and intricate details.His paintings often feature ethereal figures, frequently children, infused with a sense of melancholy and mystery.Stoupakis’ works explore themes of innocence, loss, and transformation, drawing viewers into poignant narratives that resonate on both personal and universal levels.With a meticulous approach to composition and of light and shadow, Stoupakis creates atmospheric pieces that evoke a profound emotional response.Emerging during the Lowbrow art movement, the artist quickly garnered attention for his unique blend of beauty and darkness.His works explore themes of innocence, loss, and transformation, drawing viewers into poignant narratives that resonate on both personal and universal levels.More of David Stoupakis’ beautiful and dark art can be found at https://davidstoupakis.bigcartel.com/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Henrietta Harris

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New Zealand-based artist and illustrator artist Henrietta Harris is known for her incredibly beautiful and often distorted portraits.She works with working with paper, pen, oil, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and sometimes gold leaf to produce incredible works of arts that are a fascinating mix of naturalistic, surrealistic and post-impressionist technic and substance.
Her watercolor paintings often involve portraiture with a departure into the surreal, with faces skillfully obscured and misplaced by the clean sweep of a brushstroke.She often depicts individuals at the crossroads of early adulthood, in states of uncertainty or isolation — self-scrutinizing and scrutinized by others.The artist’s earliest works were executed on paper and tended to disrupt the usual access point to emotion — the face. She made pen drawings of people with visages barren of features but surrounded by lyrical waves of hair.Using watercolor, she played with faces in other ways, multiplying them or stretching them like taffy, such that they were differently enigmatic, or differently expressive.Moving into oils, Harris began to experiment with more traditional modes of portraiture, creating immaculately rendered paintings in which brush-marks were all but eliminated.

More of Henrietta Harris’ surrealist paintings can be found at https://henriettaharris.com/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Rob Woodcox

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Rob Woodcox is a fine art and fashion photographer currently living between Mexico City, Los Angeles and New York City.Woodcox uses the human body as building blocks for his elaborate compositions.

His pictures of dancers take advantage of their strength, balance, and flexibility, as he places them in a wide variety of dynamic positions.

The results are striking photographs that are both complex and minimalist.Woodcox, who categorizes his style as “realistic surrealism,” captures an inspiring array of portraits of people in precarious situations that leaves the viewer wondering what the context is of each scene. Each concept is a declaration of his experience and seeks to tell a meaningful story to each individual that views it.More of Rob Woodcox’ surrealistic photography can be found at https://robwoodcox.com/ and https://www.flickr.com/people/rawjrphotography/.

 

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Travis Louie

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Travis Louie was born in Queens, New York, in the area near the site of the 1964 World’s Fair.

He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where he graduated in 1990 with a BFA in Communication Design, and the intent of pursuing a freelance illustration career.The visual style of Louie’s work is mostly influenced by the lighting and atmosphere of German Expressionist and Film Noir motion pictures from the Silent Era to the late 1950’s. The results are tridimensional portraits from an alternative universe that seemingly may or may not have existed.Louie’s world is grounded in Victorian and Edwardian times, inhabited by human oddities, mythical beings, and otherworldly, grotesque characters who appear to have requested their formal portraits to state their existence and place in society and history.

To achieve the dramatic “mood” in his paintings, the art is produced primarily in black and white or limited color.

Louie uses acrylic paints over tight graphite drawings on smooth grounds, like “plate” finish illustration board or finely sanded, primed wood panels.

The works reflect, in Louie’s words, a desire for a world in which fear of “the other” might be superseded by curiosity and acceptance of those who are different.More of Travis Louie’s marvelous surrealistic art can be found at https://www.travislouieart.com/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Okuda

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Okuda  is a Spanish painter, designer and sculptor whose work is defined as pop surrealism.Oscar San Miguel or Okuda San Miguel was born in Santander in 1980 and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Madrid’s Complutense University. Okuda’s work can be classified as pop surrealism with a clear essence of street or urban art.His artwork is composed of geometric prints and multicolored ephemeral architectures that help blend with grey bodies and organic forms.He started with graffiti on walls and trains, but little by little his style evolved to a major point. Now it is common to see his enormous works in some buildings around all continents, as well as exhibitions in different places.

He is often inspired by his environment, the people around him, cinema, fashion, ear music, traveling, and his everyday life.Okuda concludes that his major accomplishments lie in having the freedom to travel around the world creating his best works of art alone, working, and the living experiences with other artists from different cultures.More of Okuda’s bright, colorful work can be found at https://okudasanmiguel.com/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Leonora Carrington

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Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was an English artist, novelist, and activist.

 

She was part of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s and, after moving to Mexico City as an adult, became a founding member of Mexico’s women’s liberation movement.Carrington shared the Surrealists’ keen interest in the unconscious mind and dream imagery.To these ideas she added her own unique blend of cultural influences, including Celtic literature, Renaissance painting, Central American folk art, medieval alchemy, and Jungian psychology.She sought to capture fleeting scenes of the subconscious where real memories and imagined visions mingle.In Carrington’s rich universe, ethereal beings enact rituals with unknown purposes; these creatures have characteristics of women and animals, and seem to be somewhere between humans and beasts.There’s a soft glow and sensuality to her paintings, and some critics have said that this emphasizes Carrington’s femininity, not as a crutch but as a gift.

More of Leonora Carrington‘s marvelous surreal art can be found at https://www.wikiart.org/en/leonora-carrington and https://www.theartstory.org/artist/carrington-leonora/..

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Catrin Welz-Stein

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Artist Catrin Welz-Stein was born in Weinheim, Germany.During her studies in Graphic Design in Darmstadt, Germany, Welz-Stein  was introduced to the fields of photography, illustration and digital image processing.These gave her a new perspective on the possibilities to visualize ideas and to transport them into images.Welz-Stein started to create digital art by combining historical paintings, curiosities and fairytale-like illustrations into surreal and sensual images that are both familiar and alien at the same time.The artist tears apart old photos, pictures and illustrations, then meticulously combines them in Photoshop to create her own unique image.Although some conservative art critics may turn up their noses on digital art, Welz-Stein defends her craft with passion.“Yes, of course it is art even if it is done on a computer. There are so man more possibilities to be creative nowadays and the use of modern technologies should be seen as an enrichment to the arts,” the artist shares.“Regardless of the medium you choose to create art—creativity comes within yourself, not from the computer or the brushes you use to paint.”More of Catrin Welz-Stein’s magical work can be found at https://www.catrinwelzstein.com/.

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — (Days of Future Passed) — Surrealism

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René Magritte

https://sundayeveningartgallery.com/2016/01/22/rene-magritte/

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Mark Ryden

https://sundayeveningartgallery.com/2018/10/20/mark-ryden/

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Salvador Dali

https://sundayeveningartgallery.com/2019/01/08/salvador-dali/

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Michal Trpák

https://sundayeveningartgallery.com/2022/12/23/michal-trpak/

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Jennybird Alcantara 

https://sundayevenngartgallery.com/2022/11/20/jennybird-alcantara/

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Igor Morski

https://sundayeveningartgallery.com/2022/01/21/igor-morski/

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Miles Johnston

https://sundayeveningartgallery.com/2021/06/14/miles-johnston/

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — David King

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Sometimes I come across an artist who does remarkable art, unique art, and I can find little or nothing on the Internet about them.So it is with David King.His art is surreal; a realistic version of nightmares and dark art, all exquisitely done in oils.King’s art touches the shadowed side of all of us, his creativity evident in the different forms and species he creates.His art is reminiscent of artists of the likes of H.R. Giger and Zdzislaw Beksinski, both pioneers in surrealist imagery.He may be more of a shadow on the Internet, but his work is definitely worth checking out.More of David King‘s art can be found at https://www.davidkingart.com/ and https://www.artstation.com/davidkingart.

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery –Molly Devlin

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Molly Devlin is a contemporary surrealist painter based in Sacramento, California.In her exquisitely rendered portraits in acrylic, Devlin instills an aura of dreamlike mystery.The themes in her artwork are highly influenced by her love of nature and yearning to understand our relationship with the nature world.

Devlin’s style is most recognized for considerable intricacies, illuminated within surreal and organic dreamscapes.There is an airy, surreal feeling to her work, achieved often by transparent colors, soft brushstrokes and nebulous shapes and inferences.Her paintings provoke fantastical questions into the secrets of these animal kingdoms; how they relate, resemble, and morph into one another.

More of Molly Devlin‘s art can be found at https://mollydevlinart.bigcartel.com and https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/11/molly-devlin-acrylic-paintings/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Arabella Proffer

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Arabella Proffer is an artist, author, and co-founder of the indie label Elephant Stone Records.She attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA before receiving her BFA from California Institute of the Arts.Considered a pop surrealist painter, Proffer’s work combines interests in portraiture, visionary art, the history of medicine, and biomorphic abstraction.She delves into her practice of oil painting by creating surreal organic environments related to biology, nature, and emerging sciences.Although she started from a place of abstraction, her art became filled with strange hybrids of flowers, cells, and symbols that appeared like organisms from another planet.When her doctor showed her scans of her cancer tumor and close-ups of the cells, it looked almost identical to what she had been painting – tentacles and all.“Insects, flowers, human organs all come from the same process at the core, but within these works visualizing their fictional evolution at any given stage comes from instinct,” the artist explained.“Creating my own fragile beings and nature within these little worlds, alien forms mesh with what might be viewed under a microscope or through a telescope. Perhaps it is a wider vision of awareness, of what is seen and unseen.”More of Arabella Proffer‘s marvelous paintings can be found at http://www.arabellaproffer.com/.

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Anna Berezovskaya

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Anna Berezovskaya was born in the town of Yakhroma in Russia,  and became a student of Abramtsevsky Art and Industrial College in 2001.

Her paintings are easily recognizable by their unique signature style, which Berezovskaya refers to as “Poetic Realism.”Berezovksya brings together techniques unique to realism, abstraction and surrealism to create imaginative and creative worlds and subjects.Her pieces are riddled with symbolisms which the viewer must tease out in order to find the multiple meanings and layers to them.Berezovksya’s use of universal themes, inspired by the artist’s own life and imagination,  resonate and reflect the viewers’ own emotions and the values.She uses symbolism to create timeless works on canvas and paper, carefully selecting subjects that convey her ideas and emotions about the Russian world around her.Berezovskaya’s works are built on a world which she has created — a visual world — where she tells her stories through childhood memories of books read and images embedded in her dream-space.“I still draw on stories that I love from my childhood but in terms of development I realize I have developed and grown and my ideas are becoming more interesting, sharper, more developed,” the artist shares.“I mainly use ideas from my normal regular everyday life but these can still be serious things that I try to convey in my paintings in a humorous way.”More of Anna Berezovskaya‘s whimsical art can be found at http://www.annaberezovskaya.com/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Micah Ofstedahl

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Micah Ofstedahl is an artist from Austin, Minnesota who enjoys creating what some have called abstract surrealism.Inspired at a young age by the art of Salvador Dali, Ofstedahl went on to study sculpture in college before focusing on surrealist painting.Ofstedahl’s paintings are semi-representational, and in creating his abstract art he is drawing on the rich diversity of forms found in nature.He explores in his work the hidden sides of reality, his focus often on such things as microscopic patterns in nature and the composition of the cells in our own bodies.These are subjects that biology and microbiology continue to explore, from the neurons in our brains to the fabric of the universe.Upon immersing observers within the acrylic painter’s inspirational environments,  the artist’s glassy, shimmering spectrum ripples are finally visible.“In my quest for inspiration I am constantly being amazed by the hidden beauty and complexity of the world and this is largely what I hope to convey to my audience,” Ofsterdahl explains.More of Micah Ofstedahl‘s unusual paintings can be found at https://www.micahofstedahl.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/micahofstedahl/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Jennybird Alcantara

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Jennybird Alcantara is a Contemporary Surrealist painter from Oakland, California.

Deeply inspired by mythology, transformation, and the logic of liminal, dreamlike states, Alcantara is celebrated for her oil paintings of fantastic worlds populated by whimsical creatures and symbols.Characterized by ornate forms painted in luminous colors including pinks and reds, Alcantara’s style appears to be influenced by both academic realism and popular Surrealists.

Her art has been described as morbidly romantic, with a dreamlike narrative at its core, reflecting the connections between living beings and their environments.

Some works combine human and animal forms as well as flowers and decorative objects in a single composition that resembles a portrait or silhouette.Alcantara combines these motifs to create a symbol of the universal connection between all beings.She claims that she takes an intuitive approach to creating her brilliantly hued paintings.Alcantara’s art uses the symbolism of duality to explore the connection of life and death and the veil in between, as well as the relationship between the beauty and cruelness of nature, that of the natural world as well as human and animal nature.

More of Jennybird Alcantara’s wonderful art can be found at https://www.jennybirdart.com/.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Naoto Hattori

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Japanese artist Naoto Hattori imagines small fluffy animals with healthy doses of fantasy and some unnatural hybridization.The painted creatures often feature round heads and disproportionately large and reflective eyes.

At once adorable and unnervingly surreal, the fantastical creatures  seamlessly meld the myriad textures and colors found in nature into unusual hybrids.They’re often fluffy, equipped with horns in surprising spots, and bear eyes so inordinately large and glassy that they reflect full-scale landscapes.These acrylic paintings are small, typically measuring less than 3 inches by 3 inches when unframed.The artist’s style has been labeled as pop surrealist, but Hattori says it’s just what he sees in his mind.Of his work, he says: “My vision is like a dream, whether it’s a sweet dream, a nightmare, or just a trippy dream. I try to see what’s really going on in my mind, and that’s a practice to increase my awareness in stream-of-consciousness creativity. “The creatures in the paintings are avatars for entering the world of my imagination. The eyes feel like an entrance to the world of visionary memories.“I often paint a piece which visualizes myself as a hybrid creature entering the visionary world,” Hattori explains.More of Naoto Hattori’s wonderful surrealistic artworks can be found at https://www.naotohattori.com/.

 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Diana Rosa

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Diana Rosa is an established Cuban painter based in Canada, whose works have featured in prizes, publications and exhibitions across North America, the UK and Asia.Influenced by her festive Cuban childhood spent surrounded by an abundance of creative energies, Rosa creates works that reflect her distinctive use of rich exoticism of tropical vegetation.She employs a Naïve Folk-Art style, along with  elements of Cubist and Surrealist schools, to explore questions of identity, love, relationship and environment in our society.

The artist aims to show our relationship to the world around us through the versatile medium of acrylic paint.

She uses sharp brush strokes, contrasting textures, and a variety of acrylic mediums, commenting on our human emotions, mixed realism with fantasy.

Bright and whimsical images with a touch of modernism, Rosa’s  art brings to life thoughts and impressions dancing with imagery.

“I am always fascinated with the human story that all of us are living — often untold, sometimes unrecognized, but always significant,” Rosa shares.“My paintings reflect the natural beauty of human emotions.“They are a bridge from my imagination to theirs, and although the story I mean to tell may differ from what the viewer ultimately takes away, what is most important is that we have shared the tale.”

More of Diana Rosa’s delightful art can be found at https://www.artfinder.com/artist/diana-rosa and https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/diana-rosa-3851. 

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Arnau Alemany

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Arnau Alemany was born in Barcelona in 1948, at the foot of a hill in one of those neighborhoods that have grown in an anarchic way, without order or planning.Up the mountain in a range that imprisons the city, buildings were built in unusual places with difficult access, creating an unusual urban complex, close to nonsense.Alemany is Spain’s foremost painter of surrealistic environments and industrialized cities of the past/future, and is recognized worldwide as one of today’s leading surrealists. He conceives his work as an effort to challenge the viewer, not to leave him indifferent, be it for better or for worse.The artist creates imaginary urban landscapes, either with signs of destruction or general abandonment, which he hopes will show that visual surprise is possible through the use of magical realism.With the security of long years of drawing, graphic, pictorial and sculptural training, Alemany works to elaborate plausible and unreal landscapes.In his world, non-existent cityscapes with a perfect geometry and coherence in their individual elements, impossible to achieve in the real work, form what he calls an “imperfect landscape”.Surreal or not, his art makes us wish we could visit his world in person.

More of Arnau Alemany‘s amazing landscapes can be found at http://www.arnaualemany.com/. 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Igor Morski

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Igor Morski  is a famous Polish illustrator and graphic designer whose surreal art is as thought evoking as they are beautifully created.Morski graduated with honors from the Interior Architecture and Industrial Design Faculty at the State Higher School of Fine Art in Poznań (now the University of Arts).His surreal  illustrations often portray the relationship between humans and nature.Morski’s surrealism appeared a little bit by accident. For 20 years he has been a press illustrator with the Polish weekly magazine “Wprost”.The beginning of cooperation with “Wprost” coincided with the decision by the publisher of this magazine to illustrate with only one type of illustration, based on photo manipulation.This, he admits, made a great impression, because people were not familiar with Photoshop, and many illustrations were taken literally, as if what was shown in the illustration was really true.The fact that since then he has worked on photographic material has caused realism to appear in his work.Morski feels that  Poles have quite specific sense of sensitivity.“Wars and many other horrors that have flooded our country have made it acceptable for us a kind of narrative, difficult to accept elsewhere.  For people who viewed them, they were scary.”“As an allegory, I placed a labyrinth of stairs in the human head. In Poland, people focused on the hidden meaning, and the Dutch drew attention to the fact of head “mutilation”. They were interpreting this very literally.”More of Igor Morski‘s wonderful surrealism can be found at https://igormorski.pl/

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Pablo Picasso

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Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881 – 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France.

The Old Guitarist

 

Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

Guernica

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence.

Family of Saltimbanques

 

During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas.

Girl before a Mirror

 

After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

Three Musicians

 

Much of Picasso’s work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism.

Gertrude Stein

 

His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

The Weeping Woman

 

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

Picasso Statue, Chicago

 

More of Pablo Picasso’s wonderful art can be found at https://www.pablopicasso.org/ and http://www.picasso.com/.

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Chad Knight

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Chad Knight is a 41-year-old visual artist from Portland, Oregon.Chad was a professional skateboarder  for 16 years. During that time, it served as his creative outlet.Now he creates mind-bending 3D drawings and incredible sculptures that highlight issues such as global warming and loss of habitat for animals.Chad Knight’s amazing and incredible sculptures seem so realistic that people sometimes  want to choose them as their travel destination.According to Knight, “Everything on my work represents something or someone. My art is very much like an encrypted journal that I can share publicly.”Knight laughs that he has a very overactive, noisy mind.“Now that I do not have the opportunity to do it (skateboarding) as often, combined with being less enthusiastic about broken bones, my visual art explorations have become my new outlet.”You have to admit that all of these concepts blow your mind in one way or another. They do look real to me.

More of Chad Knight‘s amazing digital art can be found at https://www.instagram.com/chadknight.

 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Bruno Pontiroli

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Bruno Pontiroli is a French surreal artist, whose aim is to “turn the narrow vision that we have of the world upside down and disturb our imagination while shaking an accepted reality with images that are as comprehensible as they are familiar”.In Bruno’s fascinating and unusual body of work, he begins his artworks with easily-recognized animals that he then shapes “the way a child plays with modeling clay or a building set.”An admirer of René Magritte, Bruno finds inspiration in situations, books and images that surround him.Pontiroli creates mind-bending explorations of the relationship between humans and animals.The artist shies away from labeling his work as Surrealist or Dadaist, instead proposing a new version of reality without categorization.His work is so enjoyable precisely because it’s familiar yet strange.According to Pontiroli, “My aim is turn the narrow vision that we have of the world upside down and disturb our imagination while shaking an accepted reality with images that are as comprehensible as they are familiar. Distorting a symbol or mixing opposing universes allows me to question the identity of things so that I can reinvent them.”

More of Bruno Pontiroli‘s  mind-bending work can be found at https://www.instagram.com/brunopontiroli.

Sunday Evening Art Gallery (flashback) — Svetlana Bobrova

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I think one of my favorite Sunday Evening Art Gallery posts was from back in November, 2014, when I shared images from the artist Svetlana Bobrova. A surrealistic artist from Russia, the figures in her paintings are hauntingly beautiful. I cannot get enough of her and her imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see more of Svetlana Bobrova‘s amazing work at my Sunday Evening Art Gallery blog or at the blue link above.

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Zdzislaw Beksinski

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Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929-2005) was a was a renowned Polish painter, photographer, and fantasy artist.

His work reflected his preference for the obscure.His paintings concocted up odd images in the mind, and were a true step into absurdity in the field of dystopian surrealism.Beksinski was a very innovative artist, especially for one working in a Communist country. In the 1970s he entered what he himself called his “fantastic period”, which lasted up to the late 1980s. This is his best known period, during which he created very disturbing images, showing a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic environment with very detailed scenes of death, decay, landscapes filled with skeletons, deformed figures, deserts, all very detailed, painted with his trademark precision, particularly when it came to rough, bumpy surfaces.  Beksinski’s later years were ones filled with tragedy.  His wife, Zofia, died in 1998, and a year later, on Christmas Eve 1999, his son Tomasz (a popular radio presenter, music journalist and movie translator) committed suicide. Beksiński’s life reached a most brutal and melancholy end in 2005, when he was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.Perhaps his art had always reflected the darkness that one day would reflect the end of his life.More of Zdzislaw Beksinski‘s haunting work can be found at https://www.shopbeksinski.com/

Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — Remedios Varo

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 Remedios Varo  (1908-1963) was born in Spain. Remedios always struggled to combine the mythic with the scientific, the sacred with the profane.

Remedios decided to evade the civil war that was going on in Spain and moved instead to Paris where the art movements were in vogue.

In Europe she was influenced by the surrealist movement and metaphysics studies. She was motivated by ancient studies and literature, but also by physics, mathematics, engineering, biology and psychoanalysis.

After some years, she decided to move to Mexico with a friend she met in Europe. In Mexico, her real journey as an artist started.

Her characters are mystical and solitary; most of the times involved in scientifical activities. They often have almond-shaped eyes, and androgynous features.

Diverse characters emerge in her painting with unusual attitudes: contemplative, passive, highly symbolic; reflection of the instability which can be overcome or changed.

All of them are part of a unique world which involves developed concepts of magic and imagination.

 

More of Remedios Varo‘s fantastic works can be found at http://www.remediosvaro.org/ and http://www.angelfire.com/hiphop/diablo4u/remedios.html

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Kris Kuski

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Born March 2nd 1973,  Kris Kuski spent his youth in rural seclusion and isolation along with a blue-collar working mother, two much older brothers and absent father.Open country, sparse trees, and later alcoholic stepfathers, perhaps paved the way for an individual saturated in imagination and introversion.

His fascination with the unusual lent to his macabre art later in life. The grotesque to him as it seemed, was beauty.

 His work shows the corrupt and demoralized fall of modern-day society, a place where new beginnings, new wars, new philosophies, and new endings all exist.

Through his intricate 3-D sculptural work, we see both the beautiful and dark side of our minds.

Kris’s work is intricate, fascinating, and incredibly mesmerizing. Look close, look often.

More of Kris Kuski‘s work can be found at http://www.kuksi.com/ 

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — H.R. Giger

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It’s sometimes funny how your first introduction to an artist is through everyday things — like album covers.

H.R. Giger (1940-2014), one of the preeminent artists of Fantastic Realism, was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer known for his biomechanical creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes and disturbing, though memorable, imagery of grotesque sensuality.

Giger discovered the airbrush and, along with it, his own unique freehand painting style, leading to the creation of many of his most well known works.

Giger kept a notepad next to his bed so he could sketch the terrors that rocked his uneasy sleep — nightmarish forms that could as easily have lumbered from prehistory as arrived from Mars.

Giger’s art enters the rarified realm of the near magical, and certainly the land of genius.

But this generous and humble artist avoided the limelight and rather let his work speak volumes of his mastery.

The most famous book with publications of his drawings and landscapes was the “Necronomicon” of 1977.

It was Giger’s published book Necronomicon that inspired Ridley Scott’s Alien.

His work is surrealistic, magical, detailed, and plainly gorgeous.

More of H.R. Giger‘s work can be found at http://www.hrgiger.com/ and http://visualmelt.com/H-R-Giger.

Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — Collin van der Sluijs

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Collin van der Sluijs is a renowned painter and illustrator from Maastricht, The Netherlands.

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After graduation from the art academy at St. Joost in 2004, Collin moved to the south of the Netherlands where he now lives and works on exhibitions and projects.

collin-van-der-sluijs1 His work can be described as personal pleasures and struggles in daily life.

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Working without sketches or notes, the artist dives into each artwork with spray paint, acrylics, and ink as ideas take hold and images slowly emerge.

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Collin’s art also includes fascinating wall murals.

collinvandersluijs_morenhoek_02-940x623He frequently examines themes of the natural world such as the cycle of life, the depictions of various species of birds, and the psychology of beings both human and animalistic.

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 More of Collin van der Sluijs’ art can be found at Collosal or at his website Collin van der Sluijs .

You Rock!

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 3 Comments

einstein-1When I started this blog back on April 18, 2011, I must have had 20 blogs already written ahead of time. That’s how excited I was. Before I started my Sunday Evening Art Gallery blog, I probably had 10 or 11 artists on hold. That, too, shows how excited I was to get started.

Now days I am more of a on-the-spot blog writer, sharing the Goddess’s humor as she calls. Which is all the time. And my Art Blog’s collection is doubling all the time as I find more and more unique artists to showcase.

This is what creativity is all about.

Doing what you love. When you want to. Because you want to.

I don’t have an anniversary to celebrate, or moment in time to highlight today.  All I wanted to do was thank you all for supporting me, reading me, looking at my art. Telling your friends. Or just checking me out yourself.

I can’t believe there are so many branches to Creativity. I’ve talked to quilters, sculptors, painters, publicists, graphic artists, gardeners, writers, poets, photographers, calligraphers — all sorts of artists with all sorts of stories. Everyone has a different story, background, reason for exploring their creative side.

Think of the things you can create! Dragons, spaceships, murderers, gardens, parentless heroes, ghosts, musical prodigies, statues, symbols. You can change history, travel through history, interpret history. As an artist there is nothing you can’t do.

This is why I encourage all of you to “do your thing.” Know your base is strong and expand from there. There is no right or wrong when it comes to the arts. And the more you do it, the better you get at it.

I just wanted to take time to than you all. For your friendship, for your curiosity. And for your encouragement. I hope we hang together for a dozen more years. I hope you continue to enjoy my art and my pretzel-logic mind. You inspire me, and I hope I do the same for you.

Huzzah!

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — Jacek Yerka

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Jacek Yerka was born in Toruń, Poland, in 1952.

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Yerka studied fine art and graphics prior to becoming a full-time artist in 1980.

As a child, Yerka loved to draw and make sculptures. He hated playing outside, and preferred to sit down with a pencil, creating and exploring his own world.

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Yerka resisted pressures of his instructors to adopt the less detailed techniques of contemporary art and continued to work in the classic, meticulous Flemish style he still favors to this day.

He creates surrealistic compositions Based on precise painting techniques, taking pattern from former masters like Jan van Eyck or Hieronymus Bosch.

Like many artists, Yerka pulls on thoughts and memories of his past to create these marvelous artworks.

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Yerka’s carefully rendered paintings (acrylics on canvas) are filled with images from the artist’s childhood, one heavily influenced by the surroundings of his home during the 1950’s, and his grandmother’s kitchen, where he spent much of his time.

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According to Yerka, “My greatest source of inspiration is always (and I bet will be) my childhood souvenirs – that places, remembered feelings, fragrances and technique of 1950s .”

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More of Jacek Yerka‘s wonderful art can be found at the Morpheus Gallery  and at his website http://www.yerkaland.com/.

 

Sunday Evening Art Gallery Blog — René Magritte

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If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream. ”

– Rene Magritte

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René François Ghislain Magritte (November 21, 1898 – August 15, 1967)  was a Belgian surrealist artist best known for his witty and thought-provoking images and his use of simple graphics and everyday imagery.

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We all have seen a few of these images throughout our life, but often we don’t remember where or when.the-wonders-of-nature

 Magritte’s work frequently displays a collection of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things, challenging observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality.

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To Magritte, what is concealed is more important than what is open to view: this was true both of his own fears and of his manner of depicting the mysterious.

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A meticulous, skillful technician, he is noted for works that contain an extraordinary juxtaposition of ordinary objects or an unusual context that gives new meaning to familiar things.

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Not only were a number of artists intrigued by, and influenced by the work Rene Magritte created, but popular culture, and the art world in general, were extremely influenced by his creative, unique ability to take something ordinary and make viewers see something completely different.

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Magritte‘s art has been so popular that it has been copied in posters, ads, and other commercial venues. Perhaps that’s why it feels so familiar.

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You can find more of René Magritte‘s art at http://www.renemagritte.org/ http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte.html, or http://www.theartstory.org/artist-magritte-rene.htm.