PaintBlog

Colour is a great thing, and sometimes it takes a monochromatic painting to remind you of that fact.  Well, Douglas Walker specializes in monochromatic paintings, and they not only remind me how much I love colour, but also how much I love finding great art by great artists.  Go ahead and try it, find some great art here.

I have been a very big fan of Kris Knight’s work for years now, and he just keeps getting better.   He’s got a whole lot of paintings up on his Flickr site, which I suggest you go visit now.  He also has a portfolio site, but it’s currently awaiting an update, so maybe just bookmark that one and save it for the future.

OK, I’m going to say it.  The navigation on the site is a little less than ideal, but the man can work a brush people.  The paintings are excellent, and if you’re in the Toronto area, he has a show of new works opening April 12 at Ingram Gallery.   I’d go see it for the name alone.

There is a wide range of works on Michal Tkachenko’s site, her series’ ranging from traditional landscapes, to still life, to portraiture.  For me, the most powerful works involve her series of self-portraits that examine the drastic effects of a car accident she was in while working as a teenage pharmacist in Haiti.  I didn’t post one of those images though, because it’s well worth going to the site to see them for yourself as a series.

Considering just how much stuff we (and by “we” I really mean “me”) crave and consume and accumulate and then ignore, it seems like a good thing to take a moment to reflect on the things we have surrounded ourselves with.  That is where still life painting comes in.  Take Dorion Scott for example.  Her clean and elegant paintings are quiet studies of the objects we live with every day, and I for one can always use an excuse to slow down for a minute and reflect a little.

I tend to paint in a fairly tight manner, but I strive to be looser.  I’ll probably never attain the looseness that Gillian Wilson has, but maybe I’ll get close.