The internet is a funny place. Â You start looking at one thing, that thing links to another thing, and 47 links later you wind up discovering the artwork of Ben Grasso. Â His website appears to still be under construction, but the work that is there is so darn good I can’t resist posting about it now.
Thanks to TRYHARDER for being the link that led me there.
I am highly compelled by the dark and varied imagery of Ernesto Ortiz. Â His Flag Raising series makes for a fascinating narrative as well.
Simon Jensen is able to create a sense of being alone among others, which elevates his paintings into the realm of social commentary, not to mention the fact that he’s creating great visuals.  Check out the work to see for yourself.
Catherine Beaudette’s layered imagery seem to be half anthropological study and half hallucinatory dream. The results are pretty fantastic.
Janna Watson manages to capture an incredible amount of energy in her abstract works. Â There is also a fun mini-documentary on her site where you can watch her create her paintings.
Thanks Allan for the link!
Katy Horan is telling the history of a made-up world through her folk art paintings that depict the lives and rituals of her fictional people. There is a beautiful sense of story in these works, as well as a great sense of design. Â Enjoy!
Karen Perl’s work is fantastic. Â Her simplified cityscapes transform buildings and streets into geometric fields of colour, while at the same time capturing and distilling the feel of the place and time depicted. Â The energy and mood of the places she paints is captured in a frozen yet alive moment, while all extraneous detail is abandoned. Â I’ll say it again, fantastic.
The organic feel of Eric Fischl’s brushstrokes are incredibly effective at portraying the country club dwellers that populate most of his works. Â The majority of his career seems to have been dedicated to illustrating the lives of these suburbanites who are “obsessed with image over content” (as he states in his biography.) Â The result is a highly impressive body of work.
I love the combination of painting and embroidery that Katie Dutton utilizes in creating many of her works. The detailed embroidery elements add a strong but subtle physical element to the paintings, and act to remind me of the intense physical relationship an artist has with a work during the process of creation. Fantastic!
Angela Grosmann incorporates photographs and found objects into her paintings, her various series of works often commenting on and illuminating the state of marginalized members of society. Â I recommend you visit her site at your earliest convenience.
